


1%. 



)l 



f4 




Class__ TXll^ 
Goipght W. 



COPOilGlfr DEPOSIT. 



A 
PEIMER OF COOKING 



A 

PRIMER OF COOKING 



BY 
DOROTHY M. HAMILTON 




»? ^^w«« 



NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1921 



\i^'^ 
.W^^'^ 



Copyright, 1921, by 
The Century Co. 



OCT 25 1921 



Printed in U. S. A. 

g)Cl.A627371 



cr 






I INTRODUCTION 

We hear much of drudgery, but any sort of work that is 
slighted becomes drudgery. 

— William Dean Howells. 

It is hard for the beginner at cooking to dig 
out for herself answers to all the questions 
which are constantly puzzling her. And ex- 
perienced cooks, either from impatience at the 
absurdity of the questions or from inability to 
be scientifically accurate, often fail of being 
helpful. The result is that the beginner must 
learn by experience alone, laboriously and 
extravagantly wasting material. This cook- 
book aims to meet the beginner as it were in a 
laboratory: to start her in various minor ex- 
periments; to suggest more complicated ones 
without insisting upon them. In no case does 
it try to hurry past the elementary steps. 

In attempting to be specific the author faced 
the impossibility of making the book all- 
embracing. But to cover all kinds of living and 
market conditions would be to prevent the book 
from being a primer and turn it into a treatise. 



vi INTEODUCTION 

It will be easy for the reader to make individual 
adjustments. For example, the point of view 
presupposes a city community, and all refer- 
ences to stoves imply gas stoves; but the same 
results may be had with a coal stove or an 
alcohol stove with an attachable oven. 

Only simple recipes are included, because the 
nature of the book demands this. And there 
is another reason: the stress of the times de- 
mands it. In small families where there is no 
servant and where efforts are being made 
toward economy, there is no logical demand for 
elaborate meals. There is instead the tendency 
to stress the possibilities of simple ones. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction v 

IN AND OUT OF THE KITCHEN 3 

I The Meal Scheme 6 

II Easy Ways Around the Kitchen ... 8 

III Kitchen Utensils and Accessories ... 11 

IV Serving Refreshments 14 

BREAKFAST 19 

I Beverages 22 

II Eggs 24 

III Breakfast Meats 28 

IV Hot Cakes 31 

V Hot Breads 34 

VI Marmalade 39 

VII Cereals . 41 

LUNCH 45 

I HoRS d'OEuvres 47 

II The Main Lunch Dish 49 

vii 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



III Desserts for Lunch 59 

IV Cake 62 

DINNER 75 

I Soup 78 

II Meats , . . . . 86 

III Sauces 103 

IV Fish . Ill 

V Poultry 121 

VI Potatoes, Rice, and Macaroni 133 

VII Green Vegetables 142 

VIII Salads 150 

IX Desserts 161 

Index 175 



VIU 



IN AND OUT OF THE KITCHEN 



A 

PRIMER OF COOKING 

IN AND OUT OF THE KITCHEN 

You must set your own housekeeping stand- 
ard. It will depend upon the amount of your 
income, the quality of your leisure, and your 
tastes. It may demand all of your time or very 
little; you may insist that your house be in a 
state of perfection, from the point of view of 
cleanliness, or you may be contented to have it 
merely comfortable and habitable. 

But this is important: Having once deter- 
mined your individual standard, never depart 
from it! 

If it is to your satisfaction to dust the living- 
room only once in two days ; if you like to use 
that room as a reading-room, with a few books 
laid here and there on the reading-table and a 
cushion stuffed against the back of the easiest 
chair for comfort, be sure not to change it fur- 

3 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

tively for a chance caller. You are living not 
according to the caller's standard, but accord- 
ing to your own. 

i This is particularly applicable to your table 
service and the planning of meals. Presumably 
you have, every day, the most nourishing and 
daintily served meals which you are capable 
of preparing. It is taken for granted that you 
try to have every dinner well balanced and 
appetizing, though not elaborate. You know 
how much you can afford to spend for food, and 
you manipulate the amount so that you can buy 
the best food materials, — good meats, first-class 
canned goods, fresh fruit, and guaranteed dairy 
products. If meat is expensive you round out 
dinner with more cheese than usual, or with a 
milk-and-egg dessert. You have, at any rate, 
a definite course of action which you follow 
habitually. 

Could anything be more unreasonable than 
the sudden switching from this course, at the 
appearance of company for dinner — the im- 
pulse to have a more elaborate and expensive 
dinner? A dinner more elaborate and expen- 
sive than the kind you are accustomed to have 
is a discourtesy to your guest, because it is an 

4 



IN AND OUT OF THE KITCHEN 

insincerity ; it is a pretense that your standard 
of living is higher than it really is. And in- 
variably the guest feels it. 

If your breakfasts, lunches, and dinners are 
entirely suitable to you and your family, they 
will be just the thing to serve to your guests. 



5 



I 

THE MEAL SCHEME 

You will find it hard to improve upon the 
French theory of meals which recognizes as a 
serious consideration only one meal of the 
three. The French have coffee or chocolate and 
rolls for breakfast, combinations of appetizing 
trifles for lunch, and at night, when they are 
hungry and unhurried, they have a very sub- 
stantial dinner. 

This plan is good for the digestion, because 
it gives the body rest before each big meal. It 
is economical, because it concentrates expense 
upon dinner alone, — presupposing that lunch 
may be built on dinner left-overs. And, if 
thoughtfully worked out, it is the most time- 
saving plan possible for the housekeeper. The 
meat for dinner, and the potatoes with it, may 
be cooked in the morning. If the meat is to 
be baked, a baked dessert may be mixed up and 
put in the oven at the same time. If a sauce is 

6 



THE MEAL SCHEME 

to be served with the dessert, it may be made 
then, and set away to be served cold at dinner- 
time. Soup, if it is the canned kind, may be 
heated up at night, when the second vegetable 
is warmed in its sauce, and a salad mixed. If 
the soup is home-made it will have been got 
ready the day before. 

The preparation of lunch and breakfast 
should not take more than fifteen minutes each. 

So there would be, under this arrangement, a 
whole afternoon and at least half of a morn- 
ing, every day, free from cooking. 



n 

EASY WAYS AROUND THE KITCHEN 

You will find out through experience that the 
only way to hurry in the kitchen is to be neat. 
Not excessively neat; just neat enough to pick 
up after yourself ; to keep things ship-shape. 

For instance, after beating an egg hold the 
egg-beater under cold water immediately, then 
under hot water, — it will take only a second, — 
dry it, and put it in its drawer. When you take 
a little corn-starch from the box or a pinch of 
spice from the spice-sifter, put the box and the 
sifter back in their places automatically Set 
the butter back in the ice-box as soon as you 
have taken out enough for your purpose. When 
you have finished mixing up a cake put the mix- 
ing-bowl, the spoon, and the measuring-cup un- 
der cold water, then wash them under the hot 
water faucet and dry them or set them in the 
dish-drainer to dry. When you empty a sauce- 
pan or a frying-pan put it in the sink and fill it 

8 



EASY WAYS ABOUND THE KITCHEN 

with cold water. You will find it much easier 
to wash, later on, than if you had left it dry. 

Washing your pots and pans thoroughly is 
practical. For if you put them away only slop- 
pily washed you will have to rinse them out 
before you can use them again. Pie pans care- 
lessly dried will rust. A bread-board put away 
with bits of flour sticking to it will be too uneven 
to roll pie dough on, the next time you need it. 

If you look ahead, in managing kitchen af- 
fairs, you will find yourself inventing all sorts 
of schemes to save time without sacrificing 
neatness. 

You will spread a piece of newspaper down 
on your kitchen table when you are going to 
crack nuts or cut cabbage or pare potatoes or 
cut steak or mix up a cake. Then this paper 
may be gathered up with the scraps in a heap, 
and thrown into the garbage can, — a shorter op- 
eration than clearing off the table and wiping 
it with a cloth. 

You will save dish-washing by beating eggs 
in the same bowl in which they are to be baked, 
if it is a souffle you are making, or a salmon 
loaf. But you must grease the bowl before you 
put the eggs in it. 

9 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

You will put food away, as often as possible, 
in a receptacle that can go either on top of the 
stove or in the oven, so that you will not have 
to soil another dish to reheat it. 

This is not laziness, but scientific planning. 

Nor is it laziness to drain your dishes instead 
of drying them. If each dish is washed with 
soapy water, rinsed, then set in a draining- 
rack, with boiling water finally poured over the 
whole rack, the moisture will dry by evapora- 
tion in a few minutes, leaving the dish really 
cleaner and shinier than if it had been mopped 
over with a half-damp tea towel. Glassware 
and knives and forks and spoons must be dried. 
If they are left to drain, the glasses will look 
cloudy and the silverware will tarnish. 

Have a place for every cooking-utensil. 
Putting an article in its place will not take a 
minute. And finding it there when you want 
it in a hurry is a great satisfaction. 



10 



m 

KITCHEN UTENSILS AND ACCESSORIES 

Your capacity for ease and quickness in cook- 
ing will depend in large measure upon your 
kitchen utensils. Saucepans that are too big 
or that are made of scratchy ware, or cheap 
saucepans whose handles come off; a dull par- 
ing-knife ; a mixing-bowl that is too small for 
cake batter, — all these will hinder you more 
than you realize. 

It is very easy to buy too many pans and to 
buy them of the wrong material. Enameled 
ware is pretty to look at. But it is hard to 
take care of, because every time you scratch 
it with a spoon or a knife the mark stays. And 
if it gets burned on the bottom the enamel wiU 
peel off, and make the pan useless. 

For general ware, — for your coffee-pot, tea- 
kettle, double boiler, soup kettle, and most of 
your saucepans, — aluminum is more satisfac- 
tory. It is heavy enough to protect the food 
in it from burning easily, and solid enough to 

11 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

hold the heat. It is easily kept clean with steel 
wool which can be bought at the five-and-ten- 
cent store. 

You will need at least one heavy iron frying- 
pan. The auxiliary ones may be of thin steel 
or aluminum. The heavy one is to be used for 
steaks and chops, — to keep the surface of the 
meat from browning or burning before the meat 
is heated through. 

You will find that an oval dish-pan is more 
convenient than a round one. It will accommo- 
date platters, the largest frying-pan, and even 
the meat-roaster. 

Pay enough for your kitchen knives and forks 
and spoons to insure their being sharp and 
durable. Get knives whose blades run to the 
very end of the handles. Wash the wooden- 
bladed cutlery separately from the other ware. 
Never put the handles in water. 

The following is a virtually complete list of 
necessary utensils and accessories. You can 
add to it any number of luxuries, — a pastry- 
tube, a vegetable scoop, a machine for slicing 
potatoes in corrugated shape, etc., — ^but there 
is no item on this list which you can afford to 
do without. 

12 



UTENSILS AND ACCESSORIES 



FOR GENEKAI. COOKING 



Soapstone griddle 

Iron frying-pan 

Two thinner frying-pans 

Meat-roaster with lid 

Two small aluminum sauce- 
pans 

Soup kettle with lid 

Double boiler or steam cooker 

Tea-kettle 

Coffee-pot 

Tea-pot 

"Wire strainer 

Aluminum colander 

One small saucepan holding 
a cupful 

One covered casserole 

Six individual casseroles 

One shallow baking-pan 

One casserole with rounded 
bottom 

One earthenware pitcher 

Meat-grinder 

Dover egg-beater 

Lemon-squeezer 



Can-opener 

Apple-corer 

Potato-masher 

Lettuce bag 

Bread-box 

Cake-box 

Coffee-strainer 

Sieve spoon 

Spatula 

Sharp paring-knife 

Two or three broad-bladed 
knives 

Bread-knife 

Narrow-bladed, long meat- 
knife 

Three tablespoonfuls 

Two wooden-handled forks 

Wooden spoon 

Wooden fork 

Two soft napkins for drying 

lettuce 
Pair of scissors 
Ice-pick 



FOB BAKING 



Bread-board 

Rolling-pin 

One large mixing-bowl 

One small mixing-bowl 

Half -pint flour-sifter 

Glass half -pint measuring cup 

Biscuit-cutter 



Cookie-cutters 
Muffin pan 
Two pie pans 
One large loaf pan 
One small loaf pan 
Two patent cake pans 
Tube cake pan 



FOR DISH-WASHING 



Dish -pan 

Dish draining-rack 

Dish-mop 

Six tea towels 

Soap-shaker 



Soap-rack 
Sink garbage can 
Small brush and dust-pan for 
sink 



13 



IV 

SERVING REFRESHMENTS 

The spirit of refreshment-serving is excel- 
lent. There is an atmosphere of pleasant ease, 
of conviviality, and of confidence supplied by 
the act of eating in company. 

Refreshments are important enough to be 
considered thoughtfully by the housekeeper as 
a combination of privilege-duty. She can serve 
them so intelligently that they will be no real 
trouble to her, — rather a pleasure. 

Consider, in serving refreshments, that the 
comfort of the guests is the important thing. 
In the middle of the afternoon or late after- 
noon, they will not want anything to take their 
appetite from dinner. Toward the end of the 
evening they will not want a heavy food, to 
add to an already sufficient dinner and perhaps 
to spoil their night's rest. So it will be best to 
avoid very sweet refreshments, such as layer- 
cake with thick icing, ice-cream, substantial 

14 



SERVING REFRESHMENTS 

fruit salad, and candy; or insistently heavy 
ones, such as Welsh rabbit or creamed oysters 
in patty shells. 

Always make your refreshments unobtrusive. 

In the afternoon serve tea, hot or iced, ac- 
cording to the season, with lemon, sugar, cream, 
and some kind of sweetened cookies, or with 
thin slices of bread and butter, or with cinna- 
mon toast, — made by covering hot toast with 
butter, then sprinkling it with granulated sugar 
mixed with cinnamon. 

Or, on a cold winter's day you might serve 
a cup of hot bouillon, for variety, with salted 
crackers and an olive on each saucer. 

Coffee is rather heavy for afternoon. 

So is cocoa. But if you use small cups and 
serve saltines or some other unsweetened 
crackers with it, it will be very much more to 
the liking of some guests than tea. 

In the evening coffee and sandwiches are the 
only sensible form of refreshment. The coffee 
should be served in large cups, with whipped 
cream if possible, and the sandwiches should be 
dainty ones, of several different kinds. 

Use tea napkins and let the guests sit at a 
table if you can arrange it, so that they can eat 

15 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

and drink comfortably. If tlie table is imprac- 
ticable, be sure to have a tea plate under each 
person *s cup instead of a small saucer. Then 
there will be room on the plate for a sandwich. 



16 



BBEAKFAST 



BREAKFAST 

It has to be cooked fast, in most homes, and 
eaten fast, too. And if the housekeeper has 
other things than cooking to spend time on, she 
will want to clear the table and wash the dishes 
fast. 

So why not use individual trays to serve it 
on? 

These had better be wooden or lacquer rather 
than glass, so that a coffee-pot may be set on 
one of them. Have as many trays as there are 
members of the family. Before starting break- 
fast lay the trays out in a row on the kitchen 
table, cover each one with a paper napkin, 
and put on it the necessary dishes and silver- 
ware. When breakfast is ready ladle out each 
person's share, leaving the hot drink to be 
poured when everybody is ready to eat, and 
cover each hot dish with a deep saucer. Then 
the trays may be carried into any room in the 
house which is adaptable for a breakfast-room. 

19 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

A low card-table set in front of a fire in the 
living-room may be pleasant. Then, when 
breakfast is over, the trays may be carried back 
to the kitchen in a few trips, and cleared 
methodically. There will be no table to crumb, 
nor table-cloth nor mats to remove. 

Breakfast is not a lukewarm meal. Its func- 
tion is to stir the appetite, and to satisfy a hun- 
ger that perhaps does not consciously exist. 

There are two secrets to a good breakfast; 
they are, — hot and cold. Have the hot drink, 
the cooked cereal (if one is used), the bacon and 
eggs, the buckwheat cakes, very hot. And have 
the fruit and the cream very cold. Keep the 
hot things hot with dish-covers, and get the cold 
things cold by leaving them in the ice-box over- 
night. 

Although the coffee or chocolate and rolls 
breakfast is an ideal working basis — comply- 
ing with the theory that breakfast should be 
as light as possible — it will not do, literally, 
for the men of the family, nor for the women 
who go out to work. In contrast to it, however, 
is the heavy breakfast of oatmeal, chops and 
fried potatoes, hot bread and coffee. This sort 
of breakfast is not only an unfair burden on 

20 



BREAKFAST 

the housekeeper, making her get a full meal 
the first thing in the morning, but it is too 
much for the digestion of the person who eats 
it. It makes him stupid all day. 

As a compromise, breakfast might include a 
fruit course ; either a substantial cereal course 
or a light hot course of eggs, ham, wheat-cakes, 
fish or bacon ; and coffee, with rolls or toast. 



21 



I 

BEVERAGES 
COFFEE 

Have the coffee ground of medium fineness, 
and as soon as it comes from the store empty it 
from the paper or cardboard container into air- 
tight glass jars. 

To make coffee, put in the pot a heaping 
tablespoonful for each person to be served. 
Follow this with as many cups of cold water — 
using a standard half-pint measuring-cup or 
glass — and an egg-shell crushed up, for the pur- 
pose of clearing the liquid. Put this on over 
a brisk fire. When it has come to a boil, turn 
the flame down low and simmer the coffee for 
at least five minutes. The whole operation for 
five or six portions of coffee will take about 
twenty minutes. 

TEA 

Tea-ball tea is simple. Heat the water to 
22 



BEVERAGES 

the boiling-point, and pour it over a tea-ball, 
half -filled with tea, in each cup separately. 

To steep tea, put in a tea-pot — ^which has been 
rinsed out with boiling water — ^half a teaspoon- 
ful of tea for each person. Pour about a cup- 
ful of boiling water over this, cover, and let 
stand for two minutes. Then add as many 
more cups of boiling water as are needed. 

OOOOA 

For each person to be served measure into a 
saucepan a level teaspoonful each of cocoa and 
sugar. Blend these with a little milk. Then 
add a cup of milk for each portion. Bring just 
to a boil, over a rather slow fire, and serve im- 
mediately. 



23 



n 

EGGS 

In cooking eggs keep in mind that to be pal- 
atable they must be delicate. They must never 
be cooked until they are leathery. And they 
must not be cooked without seasoning, nor 
served without some sort of garnishing, such 
as toast, or a leaf cf parsley, or a shred of let- 
tuce. 

It is safe — ^when deciding how many eggs to 
use for an omelet or for scrambled eggs — to 
include one egg for each person to be served, 
and two eggs in addition to that number. Of 
course the number of poached or fried eggs to 
be cooked depends upon the individual appe- 
tites of those who are to eat them. 

FRIED EGGS 

Fried eggs, cooked soft, are the most uni- 
versally popular. Have butter or bacon or 
other meat drippings slowly melting in a f rying- 

24 



EGGS 

pan, while you break the eggs into a wide, shal- 
low bowl, taking care not to break the yolks. 
Then gently slide all the eggs into the pan, and 
turn the fire up under it. Salt and pepper each 
egg. With a spatula begin separating the eggs. 
As soon as the whites are fairly set, turn each 
eggy cook it only for a half -minute on the other 
side, and put it on a hot plate to serve. 

OMELET 

There is nothing to be afraid of in omelet- 
making, except having too hot a fire under the 
skillet. Put a tablespoonful of cooking-fat into 
the pan, and let it melt. Meanwhile beat the 
yolks and the whites of the eggs in separate 
bowls, adding to the yolks a tablespoonful of 
water for each yolk. Season yolks and whites. 
Lastly, add the whites to the yolks, stirring 
gently until they are blended. Pour the mix- 
ture into the frying-pan. Let it cook for a few 
minutes, occasionally testing it by lifting up 
an edge with a spatula, to see if the under side 
is beginning to brown. When it is light brown, 
add to the omelet any extra feature that you 
may like. Lima-beans, grated cheese, rice, or 
a few tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce are often 

25 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

used. Take the frying-pan off the fire and set 
it in a moderately hot oven, with the oven-lid 
open, until the top is set. Then take the pan 
out of the oven, turn one-half of the omelet over 
the other half, and serve. 

SCRAMBLED EGGS 

Scrambled eggs are not to be scrambled, lit- 
erally. Scrambling makes them dry and 
watery. 

Break into a bowl the eggs to be cooked, and 
beat them; add salt and pepper and a table- 
spoonful of milk for each egg. Melt half a 
tablespoonful of butter or bacon fat in a frying- 
pan. With a slow fire under the pan, pour the 
eggs into it, and let them alone for the first 
minute of cooking. Then with a spoon gently 
work at them from time to time, lifting them 
from the bottom of the pan, keeping them in 
one mass. When there is no liquid part left at 
the edge of the pan, the eggs are done. They 
will be soft, well-moistened with milk, and deli- 
cate. 

POACHED EGGS 

The advantage of poaching eggs rather than 
frying them, lies in the opportunity poaching 

26 



EGGS 

offers for putting an added flavor into the egg. 
By simmering the egg in liquid, you can make 
it absorb part of that liquid. Eggs may be 
given a meat flavor by poaching them in gravy 
or bouillon. They may be made rich by poach- 
ing them in a little tomato sauce with spice in 
it, or in a cheese cream sauce. 

To poach eggs, heat the liquid to be used to 
the boiling point, then lay the eggs in it, care- 
fully — ^in a poaching ring — and take the pan 
off the fire, leaving it, however, on the stove, 
covered. In four or five minutes the eggs will 
be done, with a white film over each one. 

STEAMED EGGS 

A quick way to cook eggs for individual serv- 
ing — as for a tray breakfast — is in small cas- 
seroles. Drop one or two eggs into each cas- 
serole, which has been buttered. Season with 
salt and pepper, and put a little butter on top 
of each egg. Set the casseroles in a shallow tin 
baking-dish half full of hot water. Put a lid 
over the casseroles. Cook over a brisk fire un- 
til the whites are set. 



27 



in 

BREAKFAST MEATS 

BACON 

It is almost impossible to cook bacon crisp 
unless it is cut thin. Bacon bought loose by 
the pound from meat markets is apt to be cut 
too thick. So, although it costs a fraction more, 
the boxed or jarred bacon is a better purchase. 
Every slice will be thin and edible. 

Have the frying-pan hot when you lay the 
strips of bacon in it. With a fork turn eacli 
slice as soon as the under side is seared. Then 
lower the flame under the pan and keep turn- 
ing the bacon until each piece is a light brown. 
Drain off the grease from the pan into a glass 
jar or other container, ready to be used as 
cooking-fat. Let the bacon lie for a minute in 
the dry pan, to drain. Then serve it. Cook two 
or three slices for each person. 

28 



BREAKFAST MEATS 

HAM 

Before cooking a slice of ham, cut off the 
brown rind along the side opposite the fatty- 
side. Leave all the fat on. Then with a sharp 
knife make short incisions along the lean side. 
This is to keep the ham from curling up while 
it cooks. 

Have a hot frying-pan ready. Put the ham 
in, leave it until one side is white, then turn it. 
Turn two or three times, with the fire high, 
until both sides are beginning to brown. Then 
turn down the fire, cover the frying-pan, and 
let the ham cook slowly for at least fifteen min- 
utes. At the end of this time turn the fire up 
long enough to complete the browning. A 
small slice of ham will be about the right quan- 
tity for three people. 

SAUSAGE 

Fresh country sausage is to be made into 
small flat cakes about an inch and a half in 
diameter, pressed into compactness, and fried 
in a hot frying-pan, without any other grease 
than its own. Turn the cakes often, and let 
them cook not more than fifteen minutes in all. 

29 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

Squeeze a few drops of lemon-juice over each 
cake before serving. 

Smoked sausage or frankfurters should be 
slit down one side and fried over a slow fire 
until the skin is crisp and brown. 



30 



IV 
HOT CAKES 

There are several points to be remembered 
about making hot cakes: 

Have a steady heat under the griddle. Get 
the griddle to the point where grease dropped 
on it will sizzle, then turn the fire down low 
enough simply to keep it at this temperature. 

Put the cake batter, when mixed, into a 
pitcher and pour it on the griddle from this. 
This will make the cakes uniform in size and 
shape and will do away with the mussiness of 
dropping batter from a spoon. 

If obtainable, use a bacon rind for a griddle 
greaser. Next best to a piece of bacon rind 
is the manufactured greaser that may be bought 
at a hardware store for twenty-five cents. This 
must be dipped into cooking-fat once or twice 
during the cake-baking. Grease the griddle be- 
fore each new batch of cakes. 

If the cake batter doesn't sizzle when 
31 



A PEIMEE OF COOKING 

dropped on the griddle, tlie griddle is not hot 
enough. 

Turn the cakes when two or more bubbles 
show on the upper side. 

Any cake batter may be mixed the night be- 
fore and kept in a cool place overnight. 

FLANNEL CAKES 

Beat up one egg, well salted, in a mixing- 
bowl. In a half -pint measuring-cup put half 
a teaspoonful of soda. Fill up the cup with 
sour milk and stir until the milk is smooth. 
Add this to the egg, then stir into the mixture 
a half-pint sifterful of flour in which half a 
teaspoonful of baking-powder has been mixed. 
Stir until smooth. 

This quantity will serve two people amply. 

BUCKWHEAT CAKES 

These must be made the night before. Put 
three cupfuls of buckwheat in a mixing-bowl, 
one tablespoonful of wheat flour, a pinch of salt, 
a tablespoonful of molasses (this is to make the 
cakes brown), half a yeast-cake crumbled up, 
and enough warm water to make the whole thing 
into a rather thin batter. Beat the mixture 

32 



HOT CAKES 

thoroughly imtil all the ingredients are blended. 
Cover it with a piece of cloth and leave it in 
a cool place to rise overnight. If it is too thick 
in the morning to pour easily from the pitcher, 
thin it with milk. 

There will be enough batter to serve two peo- 
ple for several successive mornings. It will 
keep, if it is put in a cool place. 

Some sort of syrup should always be served 
with hot cakes. Maple syrup is the most de- 
sirable, and may be bought in liquid form or 
as a lump of maple sugar, ready to be melted 
with a little cold water. 

There are good brands of manufactured 
syrups on the market, which are combinations 
of maple and granulated sugar. 

Lacking any of these, one can make a good 
syrup by boiling half a cupful of brown sugar 
with half a cupful of cold water for a few min- 
utes. Add a drop of vanilla extract, and let 
cool before serving. 



33 



V 

HOT BREADS 
MUFFINS 

Before starting to mix them, light the oven 
with a very low flame. 

Put two tablespoonfuls of butter in one of 
the compartments of a muffin pan, and set this 
over a low flame to melt. While it is melting, 
break an egg into a bowl, add a table spoonful 
of sugar, stir together, add a cup of milk, — ■ 
or half milk and half water, — add two half -pint 
flour-sifterfuls of flour with which are mixed 
three teaspoonfuls of baking-powder and a tea- 
spoonful of salt. Lastly, add the melted but- 
ter, beat for a minute or two, and pour out 
by spoonfuls into the muffin pan. Have each 
compartment not more than two thirds full. 
Bake in the slow oven which has been heating, 
until the muffins rise. This will take about ten 
minutes. Then turn the fire up and let the 

34 



HOT BEEADS 

muffins get a delicate brown. Twenty minutes 
in all should be long enough to cook them. 

This quantity of batter will make eight muf- 
fins. 

BISCUIT 

The oven fire can hardly be too hot for bis- 
cuit. Light the oven before starting the mix- 
ing, and turn it up high. 

Into a mixing-bowl sift three small sifters of 
flour with which are mixed four teaspoonfuls 
of baking-powder and one teaspoonful of salt. 
In the center of this put three teaspoonfuls of 
butter, lard, or any good vegetable fat. (See 
page 84.) Work the flour and fat with your 
fingers until the fat is distributed through the 
flour. Make a hole in the center of the flour 
and pour three fourths of a cup of cold water 
into it. Work this with the flour until you have 
made the whole thing into a soft ball. Get this 
out on a thickly-floured board, roll into a sheet 
about an inch thick, and cut it, with a biscuit- 
cutter or the top of a small baking-powder can, 
into rounds. Lay these close together on 
greased pie pans. Bake in a hot oven until 
brown. 

There will be about eight biscuit. 
35 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

POPOVBRS 

You will need a quick oven for popovers. 
Grease six compartments of the muffin pan, and 
into each compartment put a little dab of but- 
ter, — ^using about two teaspoonfuls of butter 
altogether. In a mixing-bowl beat one egg^ and 
add to it, while continuing to beat, one cupful 
of milk, and one cup of flour with which is sifted 
a pinch of salt. Pour the batter into the pan, 
on top of each dab of butter. Cook with the 
fire up high until the popovers pop, or rise. 
Then turn the fire down rather low, and let 
them get cooked through. The whole baking 
will take from twenty to thirty-five minutes. 

CORN BREAD 

In a mixing-bowl stir together one cup of 
com meal, a half-cup of flour, one third of a 
cup of sugar, half a teaspoonful of salt, and 
two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Beat up 
one egg, in a separate bowl, and with it a cup 
of milk. Add the eggs and milk to the dry in- 
gredients, beat hard for a few minutes, then 
pour into a loaf-cake pan and bake in a slow 
even until the top is brown and firm. 

36 



HOT BEEADS 

This quantity will make enough for four peo- 
ple. 

TOAST 

Have the oven turned on full for at least 
five minutes before you begin to make toast. 
Arrange the grill as close under the flame as 
it can be to accommodate the toasting-pan. A 
long, shallow pan is the best thing for a toaster. 
Have a fork ready at hand, and a hot-pan-holder 
to open the grill door with. 

Cut the bread in uniform-sized slices. Put 
these in the shallow pan. Slip the pan under 
the flame of the grill, and leave it there, with 
the grill door closed, for about a minute. 
Watch the toast carefully. As soon as one slice 
is brown, turn it. If the oven is very hot to 
begin with, the toasting process should not take 
more than two or three minutes. Butter the 
toast while it is hot. 

Crisp, hard toast is made by cutting the bread 
very thin and toasting it with a slower fire. 

Toast made on the funnel-shaped toasters 
that sit over the flame is not satisfactory. It 

37 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

gets browned and sometimes burnt on the out- 
side before it is thoroughly heated through. 

With hot bread it is a good idea to serve a 
little jar or bowl of some kind of marmalade. 
Here are two suggestions : 



38 



VI 

MARMALADE 
CANNED FRUIT MARMAI.ADB 

Peaches, pineapple, pears, berries, or cher- 
ries may be used for this. If cherries are used, 
first stone them. 

Drain a cupful of fruit and cut it into small 
pieces. Add to it the juice of one lemon and a 
cup of sugar. Cook over a medium fire for 
about twenty minutes. Let it cool before serv- 
ing at breakfast. 

OKANGE MABMAI.ADE 

Wash one orange and one lemon. With a 
sharp knife cut each piece of fruit — rind, white 
skin, and all — into shreds. Measure the result 
and put it into a saucepan with three full meas- 
ures of water to each one of shredded fruit. Set 
this away to soak until the same hour the next 
day. Then measure the mixture and to every 

39 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

cupful allow the same amount of sugar, adding 
one extra cupful of sugar at the last. Put the 
saucepan over a moderate fire and cook the mix- 
ture until it seems thick, and will drop from 
the spoon in two places at the same time, which 
is the jellying test. Then pour it into hot jelly 
glasses that are standing in a pan of hot water. 
This quantity of marmalade should fill seven 
glasses. 



40 



vn 

CEREALS 

For the preparation of cooked cereal at least 
two hours are required. Even the brands ad- 
vertised as quick cereals must be cooked for a 
long time to make them digestible. 

For cereal-cooking a steam double boiler, or 
steam cooker, is necessary. The ordinary- 
double boiler needs too much attention and dries 
the cereal up. One of these steam cookers is 
a good investment. You will find that whole 
meals can be cooked in it at one time. 

All cooked cereals should be made with cold 
water. It is easier to make them this way, and 
the resulting product is thicker and richer for it. 

Use the general proportions of one cup of 
cereal to three cups of cold water and one half- 
teaspoonful of salt. Turn the flame up high 
until the water in the bottom pan is boiling, 
then turn it as low as possible, and let the cereal 

41 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

cook for two or three hours. Morning is the 
best time to cook cereal. Then it should be al- 
lowed to cook until nearly noon. Stir it once 
or twice during the cooking. When it is done, 
take the top pan out and set it in a cool place 
until time to warm it up for breakfast. 

You can vary the serving of cooked cereal by 
frying it sometimes, after it has become cold 
and firm enough to handle as one mass. Put it 
carefully in a frying-pan with several table- 
spoonfuls of butter ; sift brown sugar over the 
top ; turn the cereal with a spatula, and sugar 
the other side. Brown with a hot fire. Serve 
with one of the syrups referred to on Page 33. 

Always be sure the dry cereal you serve is 
crisp. If the box it came in is set in a dry, cool 
place, it should keep crisp in winter as long as 
a package lasts. But it can be crisped quickly 
by spreading out on a pie pan the amount 
needed for breakfast, and setting this in a hot 
oven for less than a minute. 



42 



LUNCH 



LUNCH 

Lunch may be the one unpremeditated meaL 
Its elements are simple, — an hors d'oeuvre, or 
appetizer ; a hot dish ; a dessert. Lunch is the 
meal for tidbits. 

You can plan lunch very easily if you think 
of it in terms of the individual. For example, 
instead of making up a big dish of hors 
d'oeuvres, a casserole of salmon, and slicing 
peaches into one large glass dish, fix a separate 
hors d'ceuvre for each person; cook each per- 
son's creamed salmon in a ramekin, and slice 
only as many peaches into individual sherbet 
glasses as will be eaten. 

With food thought of in this way, one cooked 
potato will grow in importance; a chop, half 
a cup of string-beans, or one slice of cake may 
be applied to lunch, fairly, without recourse to 
the practice of dividing up the left-overs among 
the family, giving one person the chop, another 
the string-beans, and a third the cake. Sliced 
thin, the potato may be used as a basis for an 

45 



A PRIMEE OF COOKING 

appetizer. Mix it with mayonnaise and put 
several slices on each plate, with shredded let- 
tuce under them and a sliced pickle on top. 
Cut the chop up, mix with it the string-beans, 
seasoned ; then beat two eggs (yolks and whites 
separately), add the yolks to the meat and 
beans ; then the whites, stirred in lightly. Add 
half a cup of milk at the last, and turn the whole 
thing into a buttered casserole to cook in a hot 
oven for about ten minutes or until the top is 
brown. This will make a hot dish to be di- 
vided into individual portions as soon as it is 
done. Divide the piece of cake into as many 
parts as there are people to eat it. Spread a 
layer of jelly on each piece, and lay it beside a 
half-orange, or a saucer of canned fruit, or a 
few stuffed dates, that form the individual des- 
sert course. 

Lunch, like breakfast, is a good meal to serve 
on trays. The use of individual portions makes 
this desirable. If it is served on trays, cover 
the hot dishes with saucers, to keep them warm 
while the hors d'ceuvre is being eaten. 



46 



HORS D'CEUYRES 

Since it is to be the appetizer of the meal, the 
hors d'ceuvre must have piquancy of taste, such 
as acidity, or saltiness, or sweetness, — although 
sweet hors d'oeuvres usually belong to dinner, in 
the form of fruit cup or half a cantaloupe. 

But the real appetizer is made of such food as 
olives, sweet pickles, boiled ham, tuna fish, 
salmon, lettuce, pimiento, beets, salted nuts, 
celery, radishes, salads with French dressing, a 
thin slice of cold meat, timbales (which are de- 
scribed on Page 50), stuffed green peppers, or 
tart apples. 

Any one item of this list may be used alone, 
or in combination with almost any other. But 
the arrangement counts for a good deal. And 
judgment is necessary to avoid serving too much 
of a very heavy food. Here are some possible 
combinations : 

A tablespoonful of tuna fish surrounded by 
two stuffed olives, sliced. 

47 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

A lettuce leaf, with beets cut into small bits 
on top of it, and a sprig of celery laid beside it. 

A quarter of a slice of boiled bam, cut witb 
scissors into shreds; beside it a sweet pickle 
cut lengthwise, and two or three salted nuts. 

A sliced peach mixed with lemon- juice and 
olive-oil, laid on a lettuce leaf, with powdered 
sugar sprinkled over the top. 

You can see how quickly any of these can be 
made, with materials for them kept on hand. 
But here are a few to be made from left-over 
food: 

A teaspoonful of boiled rice made into a ball 
and rolled in vinegar, salted, then rolled in oil. 
Serve it on lettuce with a dab of mayonnaise 
on top. (See Page 153.) 

Scoop out the center of a boiled onion and 
put into it cold peas, or lima-beans or string- 
beans, which have first been mixed in a bowl 
with catsup or Worcestershire sauce. 

With the scissors cut into bits left-over bacon. 
With a cold boiled potato mix salt, a little 

48 



HOES D'CEUVRES 

chopped onion, and mayonnaise, and sprinkle 
the bacon on top. 

Half a cooked sausage cake, minced, seasoned, 
and served with a drop of catsup on top. Sur- 
round it with any cold vegetables on hand. 

THE MAIN LUNCH DISH 

In planning this main lunch dish — to be made, 
preferably, of left-overs — ^you will need to keep 
in mind only two basic rules about left-overs : 
first, they must be taken apart ; secondly, they 
must be put together again. 

In other words, they must be chopped, sep- 
arated from skin, bone, and gristle; shredded 
with the scissors, run through the meat-grinder, 
cut with a sharp knife, or sliced, according to 
their different natures. And then they must 
be made into compact shape again in a new 
form. 

There are three important combining agen- 
cies that play their part in cooking left-overs. 
They are, in order of importance, eggs, gravy, 
and cream sauce. 

With the help of eggs you can make souffles, 
timbales, and fritters. 

49 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

SOUFFLE 

The idea of souffle-making is to swell the 
amomit of your food material, by combining it 
with beaten egg, then baking it in a moderate 
oven, like a cake, until it rises and browns on 
top. It will bake in about twenty minutes. A 
souffle is usually made in an earthenware cas- 
serole, but an enameled baking-pan or even a 
tin one will do. Grease the pan first. 

As many eggs as you like may be used, to 
increase the bulk of the dish. But to one cup 
of chopped meat, or cooked vegetables, or flaked 
salmon, two eggs will be about the suitable 
proportion. To make the souffle, beat the yolks 
of the eggs until they are foamy^ having 
dropped a pinch of salt in before starting to 
beat. Add the left-over material. Beat the 
mixture until it is stiff, and add — stirring them 
in gently — ^the white of eggs. Half a cup of 
milk should be added if a dry absorbent ma- 
terial such as rice or potatoes is used. 

This souffle will serve three persons. 

TIMBAIiES 

A timbale is an elaboration of a souffle, and 
3,n adaptation of it to individual serving. It 

50 



THE MAIN LUNCH DISH 

combines left-over food materials of all kinds 
with eggy not to increase the bulk, but simply 
to hold the material together. It is usually very 
highly seasoned and made of two or more differ- 
ent food-stuffs, which are mashed before being 
put together. Each timbale is baked in a sep- 
arate greased ramekin, and when done is 
emptied out upside down, on the serving plate. 
It may be served hot or cold, and with or with- 
out a sauce. 

Baked beans and ground cooked ham make a 
very appetizing timbale combination. Mash 
the beans smooth, add the ham, a few drops of 
lemon-juice, and a quarter of a teaspoonful of 
prepared mustard. Add to this one beaten egg 
for each cupful of beans, — as much ham being 
used as you like, — stir the mixture, and divide 
it among the desired number of ramekins. Tin 
gelatine molds will do very well instead of china 
or earthenware ramekins. Set the ramekins 
in a shallow baking-dish containing hot water. 
Put this in a moderately hot oven, and bake 
until the timbales are solid and a little brown 
on top. By running a blunt-bladed knife around 

51 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

the edges and underneath, you can get the 
timbales out of the cases easily. 

Salmon or other fish timbales are perhaps im- 
proved by being served cold, with a slice of 
lemon on top of each, or with one of the fish 
sauces. If it is to be served cold, let the timbale 
stand in its ramekin until it is ready to be 
served. It will come out of the mold better 
when cold. 

FKITTEBS 

In fritters, which are really a form of batter- 
cake, eggs, again, are used for the purpose of 
holding the material together. They are the 
simplest egg-combination of the three, but the 
most limited, for only certain things are good 
in fritter form. Canned corn, chopped ham, or 
other cooked meat, rice, mashed potatoes, 
shredded cooked green peppers, bananas, ap- 
ples, pineapple, and peaches virtually complete 
the list. The last four are suitable for only a 
very dainty lunch menu. They should be served 
with powdered sugar over them. 

To make fritters, beat one egg for every cup- 
ful of material. Season the egg with salt and 

52 



THE MAIN LUNCH DISH 

pepper, add the left-over food to it, stir in two 
tablespoonfuls of flour mixed with two tea- 
spoonfuls of baking-powder, and two table- 
spoonfuls of milk. If canned com is used, no 
milk need be added Beat the mixture until it 
bubbles, then drop it, a tablespoonful at a time, 
into a frying-pan in which some cooking-fat has 
been melted. Have the fire under the pan low 
until the fritters have begun to cook through, 
then turn up to moderate heat. Turn each 
fritter wjien the under side is brown. Pile, at 
one side of the pan, those that are done, while 
the rest are being fried. Mash bananas for 
fritter-making. Slice apples, peaches, and pine- 
apple. One cupful of material will make enough 
fritters for three. 

There is an Italian dish of fried vegetables 
that belongs in the list of fritters. Its name 
is fritto misto, and it is an attractive form in 
which to serve assorted left-over vegetables. 
Suppose there are, in the ice-box the following : 
a tablespoonful of spaghetti cooked with to- 
mato sauce, a few slices of beets, a quarter of a 
cup of mashed potato, and some peas. This is a 
good foundation for fritto misto. Put all these 

53 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

things into separate heaps on a big platter or 
bread-board. Chop the spaghetti and the beets 
fine, and mash the peas, keeping each vegetable 
separate. Then beat up an egg in a bowl, and 
pour some bread crumbs into a shallow dish. 
Make each vegetable into two or three small 
compact rolls or cakes. Dip each roll, first into 
the eggy then into the bread crumbs, using a 
sieve spoon. Fry the rolls in hot melted butter 
or other cooking-fat, until they are brown all 
over. Serve them with hot tomato soup poured 
over them for a sauce. 

HASH AND STEWS 

When there are left-over gravy and cooked 
meat and potatoes, the main dish may be put 
together with gravy instead of with eggs, and 
you will have a stew or a hash which can be 
baked, or browned on the top of the stove. The 
secret of good hashes and stews lies in the 
preparation of the meat. There must be no 
gristle or fat on it. And it must be cut or 
chopped into small, uniformly shaped pieces. 
Mix it thoroughly with the gravy before putting 
it on to cook. Season it with something tangible, 
such as a quarter of raw onion run through the 

54 



THE MAIN LTJNCH DISH 

meat-grinder, a teaspoonful of "Worcestershire 
sauce, or a pinch of powdered sage. 

To make a stew, put the meat, mixed with 
gravy and seasoned, in a frying-pan. Add half 
a cupful of potatoes and any other vegetable 
which you may have on hand. If there is no 
cooked potato, and you want the stew to be 
bulkier, add one raw potato, cut into very small 
pieces. Season, add enough cold water to come 
half-way up the material, and cover the pan 
with a tight-fitting lid. Cook over a medium 
fire for fifteen minutes, when the gravy and 
water will be blended and the whole thing thick- 
ened by the potato. 

Hjash may be baked or fried. Prepare the 
meat as for a stew (chopping it a little finer, 
however), and add cooked potatoes or any other 
vegetable desired. Raw potatoes must not be 
used. Melt a tablespoonful of cooking-fat in 
the frying-pan, and lay the hash in, flattening 
it down into a solid mass. If you are going to 
do the cooking on top of the stove, turn the flame 
down low, cover the pan, and let the bottom 
side of the hash get brown. Then, with a broad 

55 



A PEIMEE OF COOKING 

spatula, turn it, keeping it in a mass if possible. 
When both sides are brown it is done. 

If you prefer to bake the hash, add half a 
cupful of hot water to the pan, leave it uncov- 
ered, and put it in a moderately hot oven. After 
about ten minutes take the pan out, turn the 
hash, add another half -cupful of water, and re- 
place in the over. Bake until the other side is 
brown. It is obvious that baking is a little more 
trouble; its advantage is that it gets the hash 
drier than frying. 

CREAMED DISHES 

Cream sauce is the third combining agency to 
be used in putting left-overs together. It is 
particularly good for potatoes, salted meats^ 
and fish. 

It is very easy to make a good cream sauce. 
Eemember to use approximately as much flour 
as butter, and for the ordinary sauce take a 
cup of milk — or half milk and half water, if nec- 
essary — to one tablespoonful each of butter and 
flour. Melt the butter over a slow fire, add the 
flour, and stir until it and the butter are smooth. 
Then slowly add the milk, making sure that 
the part added is thoroughly blended with the 

56 



THE MAIN LUNCH DISH 

flour and butter before you pour in more. Keep 
on stirring, after the milk is in, and have the 
fire still low. When the sauce begins to get 
thick, put into it the left-over materials to be 
used. Season with salt and pepper, and serve 
when just at the boiling-point. 

Creamed potatoes by themselves are an in- 
sipid thing to have for the main lunch dish. So 
put something in with them, to give them tang. 
Some chopped ham, or shredded beef, or a little 
cooked meat of any kind will do. Or put a few 
slivers of mild cheese in with the sauce. This 
will melt while the potatoes are warming. 

To add to the attractiveness of a creamed 
dish, you might set the saucepan under the 
flame in the grill, where you make toast. Lower 
the grill rack to accommodate the pan. Leave 
the pan under the flame for a few minutes, until 
the top of the sauce is coated with brown. 

CROQUETTES 

Using a creamed dish for a basis, you can 
very easily make the more elaborate left-over 
dish, croquettes. Make the cream sauce a little 
thicker than usual, using two tablespoonfuls of 

57 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

flour to one of butter. Then, after having added 
to the sauce whatever you want to make the 
croquettes of — cooked fish shredded, chopped 
cooked meat, or minced ham — form the mixture 
into small balls, or into flat ovals; put them 
away in the ice-box to get firm ; finally dip each 
ball into beaten egg, then into bread crumbs, 
and fry as you would fry oysters. (See Page 
119.) Serve with tomato sauce, or with a hot 
sauce tartar. (See Page 109.) 



58 



m 

DESSERTS FOR LUNCH 

These may be as simple as you like, — canned 
fruit of any kind, first cooled in the ice-box, and 
set out invitingly; sliced bananas or peaches 
with powdered sugar on them; half an orange 
or grape-fruit, prepared and sugared; stuffed 
dates ; cake ; candy ; or fruit sauce with cookies. 

Prepare the orange and the grape-fruit in the 
same way. First cut around inside of each com- 
partment with a sharp knife, to separate the 
pulp from the white skin. Then with a pair 
of scissors snip off the rays of the white fibrous 
center, cut underneath it and remove it, filling 
its place with sugar. 

To stuff dates, have ready a saucer of granu- 
lated sugar. Crack and shell some nuts. Eng- 
lish walnuts, pecans, and peanuts are all good 
for this purpose. Then take out the stones of 
the dates, fill each date with a piece of nut, and 
roll it in sugar until it is no longer sticky. 

59 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

Prunes, when well prepared, are both rich 
and delicious. But they must be soft and sweet, 
and have a heavy syrup. And they must be 
served cold. Wash them with a fruit brush and 
soak them overnight in cold water. In the 
niorning pour off most of the water, leaving 
about a cupful. Add for each prune half a tea- 
spoonful of either brown or granulated sugar. 
Cover the pan in which they soaked and set it 
in a slow oven. Let the prunes bake for about 
an hour, adding more water, if necessary, to 
keep the amount the same. Cool them before 
serving. 

Apple sauce is quickly made, with a minimum 
of trouble. Pare five or six good-sized cooking- 
apples, and cut them into small pieces, throw- 
ing away all cores and imperfect parts. Barely 
cover them with cold water in a saucepan, put a 
lid on the pan, and let them cook rather slowly, 
scarcely boiling, for fifteen or twenty minutes, 
or until the apples are soft when tested with a 
spoon. Then drain them in a wire colander, 
until they are as dry as you can get them. Put 
them back in the saucepan, mash them, and 
add two tablespoonfuls of granulated sugar and 

60 



DESSERTS FOR LUNCH 

a pincli of cinnamon. Stir until the sugar is 
melted. Pour out into a glass dish, or into in- 
dividual dishes, to cool. 

Strawberry sauce^ — not quite so elaborate as 
strawberry preserves — is made just as apple 
sauce is made, except that very little water is 
used. To a pint of berries add only half a cup- 
ful of water. Cook them until they are soft; 
drain, mash, and add granulated sugar, and a 
drop or two of lemon-juice. 



61 



w 

CAKE 

It is important to understand cake-making in 
general before you begin trying individual 
recipes. Because as soon as you know the basic 
principle you can invent your own recipes. 

There are two main divisions of cake, — ■ 
sponge cake, which is made without shortening 
or liquid; and butter cake, which does use 
shortening and liquid. 

Both kinds of cake must be beaten thoroughly. 
For both the yolks and the whites of the eggs 
should be beaten separately, — the yolks added 
first, and the whites folded in last. For sponge 
cake and virtually all forms of butter cake it is 
best to have the oven cold at the beginning of 
the baking. This gives the cake a chance to rise 
slowly before it starts to brown. 

In order to mix up a cake quickly you should 
have a half-pint flour-sifter, which measures 
approximately a cupful. You will need, toOj a- 

62 



CAKE 

large-sized mixing-bowl, — ^big enough to accom- 
modate an egg-beater without letting the batter 
splash over. 

Note: The word ** shortening'' is synonj- 
mous with cooking-fat. For cake-making, but- 
ter or one of the manufactured vegetable fats is 
used instead of meat fats. (See Page 84.) 

SPONGE CAKE 

For sponge cake, this is the usual proportion : 
To one cup of flour use one cup of sugar and 
three eggs. Add a pinch of salt and half a 
teaspoonful of either lemon-juice or vanilla 
flavoring. If you want to omit one egg, add a 
teaspoonful of baking-powder to the flour before 
sifting it. To make a white sponge cake, use 
the whites of eggs only, adding one extra egg- 
white, and put half a teaspoonful of cream of 
tartar with the beaten whites. 

Mix a sponge cake in this way : Put the egg- 
yolks in the mixing-bowl, with a third of a cup- 
ful of cold water. Beat them with an egg-beater 
until they are frothy. Then beat in, in turn, 
gradually, the sugar, the flavoring, and the 
flour. As the mixture gets too solid for an egg- 

63 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

beater, begin beating it with a spoon. Lastly, 
stir in, without beating, the beaten whites. Pour 
the mixture into a greased tube pan and put it 
in a cold oven. Light the fire just after you 
put in the cake. The oven must be at a low tem- 
perature during the whole process of baking. 
The cake should bake in about three quarters 
of an hour. Stick a toothpick or a broom straw 
into the center of the cake. If it comes out dry, 
the cake is done. Let it get almost cold before 
you try to take it out of the pan. 

When only the whites of egg are used, beat 
the flour and the sugar into the whites. 

BUTTER CAKE 

A butter cake is mixed with a spoon. Mash 
the shortening first, until it is almost liquid, 
then add the sugar to it and mix the two thor- 
oughly. Add the beaten egg-yolks, beat vigor- 
ously for about three minutes, then add the 
flour and the liquid alternately, beating well 
after each addition. Add the flavoring, then 
stir in the beaten whites carefully and turn the 
batter out on greased layer-cake pans or a loaf 
pan. Start in a cold oven. A standard-sized 

64 



CAKE 

layer-cake should bake in less than half an hour ; 
a loaf cake will need from three quarters to an 
hour. 

The proportions of a butter cake are these : 
To three cupfuls of flour, use three teaspoonfuls 
of baking-powder, one cupful of sugar, one 
cupful of liquid, — either milk or water (milk 
will make the cake more nourishing but water, 
on the other hand, will give a lighter consist- 
ency), — one-third of a cupful of shortening, a 
half-teaspoonful of salt, and three eggs. Add 
a teaspoonful of whatever flavor you like. 

If you want to make a white butter cake, 
leave out the yolks of the eggs, and add one 
additional egg-white. 

OHOCX)LATE CAKE 

To make a chocolate cake, use half a cupful 
more of sugar and add two squares of^hocolate. 
Melt the chocolate over a slow fire, with enough 
water to cover it. You can use cocoa instead, 
^Ye tablespoonf uls, but if you do, use a half -cup 
of shortening instead of a third of a cup. Cocoa 
lacks the fat of chocolate, and the cake would 
otherwise be too dry. Put either the chocolate 

65 



A PEIMEE OF COOKING 

or the cocoa in the cake just before you add the 
whites of egg. 

SPICE CAKE 

A spice cake is made by adding a teaspoonful 
each of cinnamon and allspice, a half -teaspoon- 
ful of powdered clove, and, if you want them, 
three tablespoonfuls of chopped raisins. Put 
these ingredients in before you add the beaten 
egg-whites. It is advisable to bake a spice cake 
in a loaf. If you want to make a quick icing 
for it, melt five tablespoonfuls of butter and 
beat into it half a cup of granulated sugar and 
two tablespoonfuls of cinnamon. Spread this 
over the top of the cake when it is ahnost done. 
It will melt in the oven, and form a glazed 
covering. 

OUP CAKES 

For cup cakes make half the usual amount of 
cake batter and pour it into greased muffin 
rings, making each ring about two thirds full. 
Cup cakes will bake in about twenty minutes. 
A good addition to cup cakes is a cup of chopped 
nuts put with the batter. Then when the cakes 
are done, decorate the top of each one with 
half a nut meat. 

66 



CAKE 

COOKIES 

Cookies are a form of butter cake, made very 
stiff. They are mixed in virtually the same way 
as ordinary butter cake. They are to be rolled 
out in a thin sheet before they are baked, so a 
little bit of batter will go far. This is a safe 
estimate for a batch of two or three dozen 
cookies: one fourth cup of shortening, three 
quarters of a cup of sugar, one egg, two table- 
spoonfuls of milk and about two and a half 
cupfuls of flour. The amount of flour must he 
indefinite because it depends upon the growing 
stiffness of the batter. You can use either sweet 
or sour milk with cookies. Sour milk furnishes 
a more agreeable taste. If you use sour milk, 
dissolve in it, before adding it to the batter, a 
half-teaspoonful of baking-soda. This is to 
neutralize the acid and render the milk sweet in 
effect. 

To make cookies, mix the shortening and the 
sugar together, add the egg unbeaten (the aim 
in the making of cookie batter is for compact- 
ness rather than lightness) then add the milk, 
half a teaspoonful of vanilla or other flavoring, 
and lastly the flour, cup after cup until the batter 

67 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

is stiff enough to be taken up in your hands, and 
formed into one mass. When it has reached 
this point, set it away for several hours, or 
overnight, if possible, to get it stiffer, so that 
it can be rolled out very thin. When you are 
ready to bake it, work with the batter in small 
quantities at a time, rolling it out, cutting it 
into shapes with assorted cookie-cutters, and 
baking these on the reverse side of pie pans, in 
a hot oven. It will be necessary to grease the 
pie pans only once. You can bake many series 
of cookies one after the other. Watch the 
cookies closely while they bake. A panful will 
brown in a few minutes. As each set is done 
lay the cookies out flat on a big platter or a 
piece of paper, and dust powdered sugar over 
them while they are hot. Cookie batter may be 
kept for several days, if there is a cool place 
for it. You will not have to roll it all out at 
one time. 

CHOCOLATE COOKIES 

There is a quick kind of chocolate cake that 
amounts ahnost to cookies in its finished form. 
It can be mixed and baked in about twenty 
minutes, all told. 

68 



CAKE 

Here is the way it is made : In a small sauce- 
pan put a heaping tablespoonful of shortening 
and a square of chocolate. Melt these over a 
slow fire. Meanwhile beat an egg in a mixing- 
bowl, add to it half a cup of sugar, a quarter of 
a cup of flour, and a few drops of vanilla. Beat 
well, then add the melted shortening and choco- 
late. Pour the batter out on a greased pie pan. 
Cover the top of the batter with chopped nut 
meats and bake in a hot oven until the top is 
set, or about ten minutes. The batter will 
still be soft underneath, when you take it out 
of the oven. Let it stand for a while, to cool, 
then cut it in squares like fudge. These cakes, 
as soon as they are cold, should be placed in a 
covered jar. 

GINGERBREAD 

Gingerbread follows rules of its own. It is a 
butter cake, but it is made with molasses instead 
of sugar and depends for its flavor upon spices. 

Here is an easy recipe for soft gingerbread: 
Break an egg into a bowl and slowly stir into 
it three fourths of a cup of molasses. Add a 
cupful of flour with which are sifted one tea- 
spoonful each of cinnamon and ginger. Heat 

69 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

to the boiling-point half a cnp of water. Pour 
this over a tablespoonful of butter and a tea- 
spoonful of baking-soda, in a cup; it will in 
one operation melt the butter and dissolve the 
soda. Add this liquid to the batter, beat well, 
and pour into a cake pan. Bake in a very slow 
oven for about half an hour, or until a straw 
inserted into the cake will come out dry. 

ICINGS 

Cake icings may be either cooked or mixed 
cold. The cold ones are simpler of course and 
for most purposes they will be satisfactory. 
Manufactured cake icings of vanilla and choco- 
late may be bought, which require only a min- 
ute ^s time to moisten them and spread them 
on a cake. Or you can make cold icings your- 
self, by using cocoa, powdered sugar, milk, 
and a flavoring. 

For a cold chocolate icing for a standard- 
sized cake, take a cup of sugar and half a cupful 
of cocoa. Mix them and add gradually enough 
milk to make the icing of the right consistency 
to spread. There is danger of adding too much 
milk. Half a tablespoonful is enough to start 

70 



CAKE 

with. If you add too much you will have to add 
more sugar and cocoa. 

To make a white icing use a cup and a half 
of powdered sugar, with milk and a drop or two 
of vanilla or lemon-juice. 

A cooked chocolate icing is made like fudge. 
Put half a cupful of grated chocolate in a 
saucepan with a cup of sugar and one fourth 
of a cupful of milk. Let this boil without stir- 
ring for ten minutes. Then take it from the 
fire, put it in a cool place for ^ve or ten minutes, 
add a small piece of butter, and beat it until 
it is thick enough to spread. A few marsh- 
mallows beaten with the icing will improve it. 

Make a caramel icing with a cupful of brown 
sugar and one fourth of a cupful of water. Let 
this boil until it will spin a thread when you 
drop it from the spoon. Beat, when it is partly 
cooled, flavor it with vanilla or lemon- juice, and 
spread it on the cake. 

A boiled white icing will require the whites of 
two eggs. Have them beaten stiff, ready in a 
big bowl. In a saucepan cook together a cupful 
of sugar and one third of a cupful of water, 

71 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

boiling them until they make a syrup that will 
spin a thread. Pour the syrup, as soon as it is 
done, into the beaten egg-whites, stirring the 
mixture as you pour. Keep on beating, after 
the syrup has been poured in, until the icing gets 
thick. Add a few drops of vanilla before you 
spread it on the cake. Cocoanut or chopped 
nuts might be mixed with the icing or sprinkled 
over the cake after the icing is spread on. Can- 
died cherries sliced make a pretty decoration. 



72 



DINNER 



DINNER 

A perfect dinner satisfies but does not stuff 
you. It is pleasant to eat because it is made 
up of a number of surprising, delicious things, 
each one of which leaves you wishing for just 
a bite or two more. And in the end the com- 
posite effect is satisfying. 

By all means let it be served in courses. This 
will not mean jumping up from the table. The 
main course and dessert can sit on a side table 
or on a tea-wagon, beside the hostess, until they 
are needed. Covers may be kept on the hot 
dishes. Then as each course is finished the 
dishes from it can be put on a lower shelf of the 
tea-wagon or at one side of the serving-table. 
All this is possible without any one 's getting up 
once from the table. 

There is an economical reason for having a 
soup course at dinner: it begins the satisfying 
of hunger so that by the time the meat is served 
some of the corners of the appetite have been 

75 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

rubbed off. And there is a digestive reason, too ; 
soup prepares the system for more solid food, 
by warming and stimulating it. But it is not 
wise to serve more than a cupful of soup at 
dinner. More than this will spoil the appetite 
for the things to follow. 

In planning dinner, the great point is to have 
it a balanced meal. That is, the courses should 
dovetail into one another, without repetitions 
of the same food element; and no one course 
should be too heavy in itself. A meal of cream 
of potato soup, roast pork, sweet potatoes, cole- 
slaw, and blanc-mange, for instance, would be 
poorly chosen for two reasons: it repeats the 
milk element by having milk both in soup and 
in blanc-mange; it repeats the potato element 
by having potatoes both in the soup and in the 
main course ; then the main course is much too 
heavy to follow a heavy soup course. If this 
dinner were changed to a thin soup, roast pork, 
sweet potatoes, a plain lettuce salad with 
French dressing, and blanc-mange, it would be 
balanced. 

In general, with roasts of meat, steaks and 
braised meat dishes, a thin, light soup or bouil- 
lon is preferable, and the salad and dessert 

76 



DINNER 

courses should be light. By a light dessert is 
meant one not using much milk, eggs, or flour 
in the preparation. Fruit, gelatine, fruit whips, 
and cottage-pudding are light desserts. Pie, 
custards, puddings, and rich cakes are heavy 
ones. 

Make a festival of dinner, by using always the 
finest china, silverware, and table coverings 
you have. Use a low light for the table,— a 
chandelier or a table lamp. Finish the meal 
with after-dinner coffee in little cups. 



77 



SOUP 

Perhaps the easiest thing to learn to make 
well — and certainly the most economical thing — 
is soup. There are three kinds, — ^meat soup, 
vegetable soup and cream soup. 

The theory of soup-making is the drawing out 
of juice from a solid substance. So the soup 
must be begun with cold water ; hot water would 
sear the surface of the material and in that way 
keep in a large proportion of the juices. The 
process of drawing out juice is a long one. 
Therefore the soup must be allowed to cook at 
a very low temperature for a long time. And 
since the juices, as they are drawn from the 
solid substance, must not be lost by going up in 
steam, the soup kettle needs a tight-fitting lid, 
to be kept on it during the period of cooking. 

Of the three kinds, meat soups are the most 
important, for they have the widest range of 
variation and are most appropriate for dinner. 

78 



SOUP 

Never buy meat or meat bone for soup. 
Scraps of steak, chops, and boiling pieces, and 
gristly, bony parts of roasts will do just as 
well and cost nothing. Soup can be made with 
either cooked or uncooked meat. 

You must keep a big stock of seasonings. 
These come in little paper boxes with perfor- 
ated lids for sifting out easily. You will need 
the following: thyme, sage, powdered clove, 
whole cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, celery 
seed, mace, and some bay leaves. Besides these 
get a bottle of kitchen bouquet, — a liquid used 
to give flavor and a brilliant brown color to 
soups and gravies. Onions should be on hand 
always, and so should parsley, fresh or dried. 

MEAT SOUP 

If, then, you have just had a roast of beef or 
veal, have used every bit of the lean meat, and 
have nothing left but the foundation of bone, 
fat, and stringy meat, put all this in the soup 
kettle, salt it as freely as you would salt that 
much meat at the table, add to it half a tea^ 
spoonful of kitchen bouquet, half a bay leaf, a 
slice of onion, three cloves, and just enough 
water to cover it. Put the lid on tight and set 

79 



A PEIMEB OF COOKING 

the kettle over a barely lighted fire. Start the 
soup in the morning, if possible. Let it simmer 
all day until bedtime. Add more water during 
the day, if necessary, to keep about the orig- 
inal quantity. You will not have to stay at home 
to watch the soup, for it cannot go dry if the 
lid is on tight and the fire very low. After it has 
cooked all day, take it off the fire, strain it 
through a wire colander to remove from it all 
solid matter, and let the liquid stand overnight 
in a cool place. In the morning it will be cov- 
ered with a thin cake of white fat. Lift this 
off, carefully, and save it for cooking purposes ; 
soup fat is always savory from the seasonings. 
The soup, if it has stood in the ice-box all 
night, will probably be in the form of gelatin, — 
an infallible sign of good soup. 

But whether it has gelatinized or not, it may 
be thinned a little, like canned soup, before 
being heated up for serving. During the re- 
heating you might cook a tablespoonful of rice 
in the soup, or a stalk or two of celery cut into 
dice. And there are many brands of noodles on 
the market that are made particularly for soup, 
notably alphabet noodles and vermicelli; they 
can be cooked in about ten minutes. If there 

80 



SOUP 

is more soup than can be used at one meal, the 
rest will last for two or three days in the ice- 
box. You can change the character of it, on the 
second reheating, by adding a spoonful of to- 
mato sauce to it. 

You can of course use two or more kinds of 
meat in the same soup, and both cooked and 
uncooked meat. The seasonings may be varied 
to suit your taste. But use only a little of each 
seasoning — particularly of bay leaf — and try to 
have one flavor more dominant than the rest. 
Onion would be dominant in the soup just 
described. Cabbage might have been used in- 
stead — only two leaves of it — and a pinch of 
mace instead of bay leaf, or a teaspoonful of 
dried parsley instead of cloves, 

VEGETABLE SOUP 

The vegetable soups, commonly called purees, 
are thick and very nourishing. They may be 
made in an hour or less. Potatoes, cooked dried 
beans or peas, and canned vegetables of all 
kinds are used for a foundation. 

They follow the principle of meat soups. Cut 
the vegetables into small pieces, salt them, and 
add some seasoning element. This may be a 

81 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

slice of onion, some celery tops, a pinch of dry 
mustard. Cover with cold water, put a lid on 
the kettle, and cook over a slow fire. At the 
end of an hour, hold a wire colander over a 
bowl and strain the soup into the bowl. With a 
potato-masher force the vegetable itself through 
the colander. With a tablespoon you must keep 
clearing the under part of the colander as the 
vegetable pulp comes through. When this is 
done, melt a tablespoonful of butter in the 
empty saucepan, add to it a tablespoonful of 
flour, and stir them together until they are 
smooth. Gradually add the soup mixture, with 
the saucepan over the fire, stirring as you pour 
it, and let the whole thing come to a boil. It 
will be thick and well blended. It is now ready 
to be served, or to be set away to be reheated 
and served later. 

CREAM SOUP 

Cream soups are more expensive than the 
others, a little more complicated in the making, 
and too rich to serve with any but a very light 
dinner or as the main dish for lunch. 

They are made in the top part of a double 
boiler. Almost any vegetable except dried 

82 



SOUP 

ones that require long cooking, may be used. 
These may be used too, of course, if they have 
first been cooked soft. Celery, com, string 
beans, carrots, lettuce, and asparagus are most 
often used. 

For an example, choose cream-of-celery soup. 
Use only the rough, outer stalks, saving the 
tender ones for an hors d'oeuvre at lunch. Wash 
the stalks and leaves, scrape away any brown 
places, and cut the celery into small pieces. 
Put these, with all the leaves, in the double 
boiler. Salt them, add half an onion- cut into 
slices and half a carrot cut into thin threads. 
Pour over this a pint of milk or half a pint each 
of milk and water. Put boiling water in the 
bottom of the double boiler and set the soup on 
over a high flame until the water is boiling rap- 
idly in the lower pan. Then turn the fire down 
rather low, — just high enough to keep the water 
at the boiling-point. Let the soup cook, tightly 
covered, for three-quarters of an hour. At the 
end of this time strain it through a wire col- 
ander, then carefully take out the pieces of 
celery and carrot and add them to the liquid. 
In the saucepan mix butter and flour and add 
the soup to them gradually as you did when 

83 



A PEIMER OF COOKINa 

making the puree. But be sure not to let the 
soup reach the boiling-point, for it is likely to 
curdle if it boils. It may be reheated without 
the double boiler, but must never boil. 

CfOOKING-FATS 

You will find it convenient to keep the fat 
that you lift off meat soups (See Page 80), in a 
glass jar separate from the fat drained from 
bacon or ham ; for both types of fat have their 
special uses. Soup fat may be used for all meat- 
frying, for frying fritters, batter-cakes, and 
croquettes, and even for making dumplings to 
go with a meat stew (See Page 98) or for the pie 
crust of a salmon pie (See Page 117). Bacon 
and ham fat may be substituted for butter in 
frying eggs (including omelet and scrambled 
eggs) and potatoes. Tomatoes (See Page 148) 
are much improved in flavor if they are fried in 
bacon fat rather than butter. 

The choice of appropriate fats for each kind 
of cooking lies with your own tastes, and with 
the demands of economy. Butter might be 
used for every kind of cooking or baking. But 
it is expensive. Olive-oil, which is excellent for 
frying steaks or reheating green or canned veg- 

84 



SOUP 

etables, also is expensive. Lard's uses are lim- 
ited almost exclusively to pastry-making and 
to the frying of batter-cakes, fritters, and 
breaded meats, — ^when the cheaper and more 
savory soup fat is lacking. A reliable, mod- 
erately economical fat which can be used for 
virtually every purpose except for the making 
of cream sauces, for the butter-and-milk dress- 
ing for potatoes, and for frying eggs, is the 
manufactured compounds made from peanut- 
oils, cotton-seed oils, or vegetable oils. These 
come in cans of various sizes, fitted with detach- 
able lids, and are mild in flavor, and as white as 
lard. This manufactured cooking-fat can safely 
be used instead of butter in any kind of baking. 
In the baking of white cakes, particularly, it is 
superior to butter, because of its lack of color. 



85 



n 

MEATS 

There is no absolute way to cook any cut of 
meat. Personal taste enters into consideration ; 
so do the amount of time you have to spend and 
the amount of money. If you are interested in 
creating meat dishes, — ones that will be remem- 
bered for a new flavor or for a peculiar piquancy 
of sauce and garnish, — ^you will more than likely 
cook the same cut of meat differently every time 
you have it. 

But at least you will want to avoid bleakness 
in your meat-cooking, — pale, stringy boiled 
beef, served with only its own thin liquid to give 
it zest ; steak that always tastes the same, with 
a uniformly mild, usual gravy; ungamished, 
bedraggled-looking baked meat; stews that 
never vary their carrots, potatoes and lamb. 

If you once understand the principle upon 
which all meat is cooked, you can form your 
own theories : and you will find that the cooking 

86 



MEATS 

of meat becomes a fascinating, never-solved 
game. 

Meat, to be made appetizing, must undergo 
two processes. It must first be browned to keep 
in its flavor and juices. Then it must be cooked 
long enough to soften its fibers. The browning 
is done on top of the stove, usually in the pan 
in which the meat is to be cooked tender. The 
cooking is done in the oven, under the grill of 
the oven, or on top of the stove, according to the 
nature and the size of the cut. 

The meat is seasoned during the second 
process rather than the first because salt is apt 
to make the juices run out. And, since it is the 
seasoning, even more than the cooking, that 
makes the meat good, you can see how important 
it is to surround the meat, during the period of 
softening, with savory elements for it to absorb. 
If the piece of meat is not one of the tender 
cuts — such as tenderloin steak, lamb chops, sir- 
loin or porterhouse steak, or veal liver — or if 
it is chunky in shape and therefore suitable for 
roasting or baking, then this surrounding ele- 
ment should be liquid. Otherwise it may be 
sliced vegetables, herbs, or a dash of condiment. 

87 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

So we get to this general rule : Tender, thin 
cuts of meat, including tender steaks and chops, 
are cooked quickly without any surrounding 
liquid. They are either fried or broiled. They 
are made savory with dry seasonings, not added, 
sometimes, until the process of cooking is fin- 
ished ; that is, the seasonings are often put into 
the sauce that is served with the meat. On the 
other hand, the bigger pieces of meat, such as 
three- or four-pound roasts and boiling-cuts, 
and the pieces that come from the muscular 
parts of the animals : flank steaks, rump steaks, 
shoulder, and shank, are cooked for a long 
time, in some sort of liquid. Then, in most 
cases, this liquid forms the basis for the sauce 
to be eaten with the meat. 

STBAK 

Because the process is shorter, you might be- 
gin with steak-cooking. But steak is an ex- 
pensive cut ; having learned how to cook it, you 
will be wise to keep it only for special occa- 
sions and concentrate upon the more slowly 
cooked meats. 

Unless there is a strong reason for serving 
the steak whole you will find it easier and more 

88 



MEATS 

attractive to cut it into little individual rounds 
before you begin to cook it. Wipe each side of 
the steak with a piece of damp white paper, and 
lay it out on a slightly floured board. Cut the 
rounds, trimming off some of the fat. Lay away 
any steak that you don't use, to make into a 
lunch dish for the next day. Let each piece of 
steak get covered lightly with flour. Put two 
tablespoonfuls of butter or cooking-fat or olive- 
oil into a hot frying-pan to melt. Then lay the 
steak in with the flame turned up high. After 
a few minutes turn each piece. When both sides 
are beginning to brown, turn them often, keep- 
ing the fire high. Season the pieces after about 
five minutes, with salt, pepper, a pinch of sage, 
and a pinch of powdered clove. The steak will 
be done in less than ten minutes. Lay it at one 
side of the frying-pan, away from the intense 
heat. Turn the flame down a little. Then add 
to the juice in the pan a cupful of canned peas 
or lima beans or mushrooms or stuffed olives 
cut in halves, or celery cut into half -inch pieces. 
Brown this gently. When it is done lay the 
steak on a platter, garnish it with the browned 
vegetable, and cover it with a sauce made from 
the grease and juices in the pan. 

89 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

A simple sauce is made by adding a very little 
flour to the juices, — ^half a tablespoonful is a 
safe amount, — stirring this until it is brown and 
blended, then slowly adding less than a cupful 
of cold water or cold left-over soup if you have 
it. Stir constantly and season with salt and 
pepper. When this is smooth, it is ready to be 
poured over the steak. 

If you want to broil the steak, light the oven 
before you begin the cutting up and flouring of 
the meat. Put the rounds in a broiling-rack and 
hold the handles of it securely shut. When the 
grill of the oven is hot, open the grill door, stick 
the broiler in, and expose each surface of the 
steak to the flame for a minute, to sear the skin. 
Turn the broiler two or three times during this 
process. Then lower the grill flame slightly and 
continue turning until the steak is cooked 
through. Lay it on a hot platter and pour a 
sauce over it. You might use one made thus : 
Melt a tablespoonful of butter, add to it the 
juice of half a lemon, and beat it with a fork 
until it is foamy. Put some of it on each round 
of steak then add a bit of parsley on top. 

90 



MEATS 

CHOPS AKD LIVER 

Lamb chops are cooked just like steak. Pork 
and veal chops need a little longer period after 
they are browned. Lamb chops may be broiled 
because they are as tender as steak; but it is 
safer to fry pork and veal chops. Turn the 
flame down very low and let them simmer with 
a lid on the pan for fifteen or twenty minutes. 
Veal liver must have a preliminary coating over 
it to hold in the juices even before it is put in 
the pan to brown. This coating is put on with 
boiling water. Put the liver in a colander and 
pour the water over it until the surfaces get 
white. Cook liver just like pork chops, allow- 
ing it to simmer after it is brown. 

BOAST BEEF 

If you want a roast of beef, try a three-pound 
piece from the rump, called a rump boiling- 
piece, instead of buying the more expensive rib 
roast. You will find the flavor excellent and 
there will be more meat left over for the next 
day, for a rump boil is a very lean, meaty cut, 
while a rib roast has all the waste of the rib 
bones. 

Here is one way to cook it : In a baking-pan 
91 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

which has a tight-fitting lid, — preferably an 
iron Dutch oven, — melt two tablespoonfuls of 
butter. Drop into this two medium-sized 
onions, pared and sliced. Salt them and stir 
them until they are pale brown and beginning to 
soften. Then push them to one side of the pan. 
Lay the piece of meat in. Hbld each surface 
of it against the bottom of the pan until it is 
seared all over and brown. Then season it with 
salt and pepper and a pinch of mace, and take 
it out of the pan. Add a tablespoonful of flour 
to the grease in the pan, stir it, and let it get 
brown and blended. Mix the onions with the 
flour and add two cupfuls of cold water, slowly, 
stirring all the time. When this sauce has 
reached the boiling-point put the meat back in 
the pan, turn out the fire under it, cover the pan 
tightly, and put it in a hot oven. As soon as 
the pan is in the oven turn the flame down to a 
low temperature. Let the meat bake for about 
two hours. Look at it once or twice in that 
time to see if there is enough water in the pan. 
If you like, you can cook potatoes in with the 
meat. This will give them a savory meat taste 
and brown them, too. Pare the potatoes and 
cut them into quarters or slice them with a 

92 



MEATS 

cabbage-cutter, to make them attractive. The 
more finely cut they are, the less time they 
will need to cook. Lay them beside the meat 
and turn the oven fire up higher. They will be 
done in from twenty to twenty-five minutes. 
Then the meat and the potatoes are ready to go 
on their platter. The sauce is ready, too, all 
brown and smooth and savory of onions. 

POT BOAST 

This way of baking meat is scarcely different 
from oven-roasting, except that a pot roast is 
cooked entirely on top of the stove. So, if it is 
a pot roast you want, proceed just as before, 
but allow the baking pan to simmer over a slow 
burner for about three hours. And instead of 
putting potatoes in with it you could make 
macaroni or rice the starchy vegetable; both 
of these need the richness of taste that meat 
juice can give them. Put them in an hour be- 
fore the meat is done. 

BAKED MEATS 

^ If you are cooking one of the flatter baking- 
pieces,— such as round or flank steak,— double 
pork chops or hreaded chops, you will follow 
the same principle of browning the meat first 

93 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

in a frying-pan or baking-pan, then making a 
sauce to bake the meat in or simply putting 
water or soup stock in the pan instead. Of 
course the smaller and flatter the piece of meat 
is, the less water is necessary, and the less time 
is needed to cook the meat tender. As a rule 
add just enough liquid to come halfway up the 
bulk of the meat. 

Baked steak and stuffed or breaded chops 
need some special preparation before they are 
ready to be browned in the pan and baked. 

Steak is often breaded or stuffed before being 
baked. To bread it, cut it into rounds, just as 
you would cut sirloin or tenderloin steak into 
rounds for frying, and remove most of the fat. 
Beat an egg in a bowl ; season it with salt and 
pepper. Put some bread or cracker crumbs 
in a shallow dish. Dip each piece of steak first 
into the egg, then into the crumbs. Finish by 
putting it in the hot frying-pan. Veal chops, 
pork chops, and mutton chops are breaded the 
same way. 

To stuff a steak, rub it thoroughly with a 
damp piece of paper, lay it out, whole, on a 

94 



MEATS 

floured board, and sprinkle it with crumbled 
bits of bread. Season the bread with salt and 
powdered sage. Dot the bread with butter. 
Then roll the steak up like a jelly roll, tie it with 
string, and put it in the frying-pan. 

Either lamb or pork chops may be bought 
double, with a pocket cut between the two to 
hold a stuffing. Lamb chops are so small that 
they may be fried, slowly, when they are stuffed, 
instead of being baked. But it is safer to bake 
them, for from half an hour to three-quarters, 
in a moderate oven. Make the stuffing of crum- 
bled bread, seasoned with leaf sage and salt and 
pepper. With lamb chops you can get a deli- 
cate flavor if you moisten the stuffing with a 
teaspoonful of tomato sauce. (For an accom- 
panying sauce, see A on Page 105.) 

Experiment with your stuffed pork chops and 
lamb chops, by baking them without a lid over 
the baking-pan, and without any liquid added 
to them. Use more grease in the browning of 
them, and as they bake, occasionally lift up 
some of the grease in the bottom of the pan 
with a spoon and pour it over them. They 

95 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

should get crisp on the outside and mealy in- 
side. 

This process is real roasting. It is suitable 
for all fat roasts, such as roasts of veal, pork, 
or lamb. It is not best for beef roasts, unless 
it is very skillfully done. 

It has the advantage of making the roast 
drier inside than baking makes it, of getting the 
outside crisper, and of keeping from the meat 
all extraneous flavors, which seasoned sauce or 
hot water will give to it. 

This plain roasting may be varied by roast- 
ing with the help of sliced vegetables. Make a 
bed of sliced potatoes, carrots, and any sort of 
canned vegetables. Season these, and lay the 
roasting-meat on top of them after you have 
browned it in another pan. As the meat 
roasts, the vegetable liquid will mix with the 
grease from the meat itself, so that what you 
will have to baste the roast with will be a most 
savory gravy. To roast, have the fire high for 
about twenty minutes, then turn it to a moder- 
ate height for the rest of the cooking. The 
meat is done when you can prick little shreds 
from it easily, with a fork. 

96 



MEATS 

MEAT LOAP 

Meat loaf is economical, depending for its 
flavor upon tlie seasoning it gets ; ground meat 
at best is almost flavorless. The loaf must be 
held together with egg. Beat up one egg for 
each pound of ground steak. Season the egg 
with salt and pepper and add the meat to it. 
Then add half a cupful of bread crumbs to 
increase the bulk. Cooked rice or mashed po- 
tatoes will do even better if they are on hand. 
Make the meat into a flat loaf and when it is 
compact lay it in the frying pan. When the 
under side of the loaf is brown, turn it, to 
brown the upper side. Lift it with a spatula, 
carefully, so that the loaf does not break. You 
can cook an onion, sliced, in the grease around 
the meat, to form the foundation for a piquant 
sauce, or, instead of that, a sliced tomato, or a 
quarter of a can of stewed tomato. Or, if you 
sprinkle flour on top of the meat loaf and rub 
some flour with a spoon into the grease in the 
pan, before pouring on the boiling water in 
which the loaf is to bake, there will be a gravy 
around the meat when it is done. Drop some 
Worcestershire sauce or catsup into this, before 
serving it over the loaf. 

97 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

STEW 

If yon intend to have a meat stew, it will save 
cooking-time to tell the meat dealer to cnt the 
boiling-meat up into small pieces. Drop these, 
after yon have floured them, into the frying- 
pan, and be sure to brown every side of every 
piece. Stewed meat is cooked entirely under 
water. So, after browning the pieces, pour 
over them enough boiling water — or soup, if 
you have it — to cover the meat. Put the lid on 
the pan, turn the flame down to simmering heat, 
and let the stew cook for an hour or more. Then 
add any vegetables you want: sweet potatoes 
will go well with veal or lamb ; rice or Irish po- 
tatoes with beef ; add carrots, cooked or canned 
lima beans, asparagus, string beans, peas, or 
celery. Cook the stew a half-hour longer, to 
soften the potatoes, which should of course be 
cut up fine. 

Then, in a small mixing-bowl, make dump- 
lings to finish and thicken the stew. Sift a tea- 
spoonful of baking powder with a cupful of 
flour and a pinch of salt. Mix with the flour 
a teaspoonful of butter, until the two are 
blended. Do this mixing with your fingers. 

98 



MEATS 

Then add just enough cold water, — ^not more 
than a quarter of a cupful, — to make the flour 
into a soft wad. Drop this, a little at a time, 
into the stew. When it is in, put the lid on the 
stew tight and cook for fifteen minutes. Then 
the stew and dumplings are ready to be served 
in a tureen. 

CASSEROLE DISHES 

Based on the principle of the stew — ^that is, 
meat cut into pieces, browned, and cooked for 
a long time in a covering liquid — ^is the theory 
of casserole baking. It is the favorite cooking- 
method with the French. Their casseroles are 
fitted to cook either on top of the stove or in the 
oven, which is a good plan because it makes it 
possible to do the browning and cooking all in 
the same pan, thus conserving every flavor and 
bit of juice. However, these casseroles cannot 
very well be used for serving the finished dish, 
so some of the essence is lost, finally, in the 
transferring of the meat to a serving-dish. But 
this difficulty is solved by the use of one of the 
old-fashioned baking dishes of enameled ware, 
— the kind meant for baked beans and macaroni 
with cheese. It can cook over the fire and in 

99 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

the oven and later it will fit into a silver holder, 
ready for the table. It is only necessary to find 
for it a tin lid that will fit tightly over it, dur- 
ing the process of cooking. 

For casserole cooking you can use any kind 
of meat, cooked or uncooked, with almost any 
kind of sauce or vegetables. But the season- 
ing must be adequate. The meat must cook 
long enough to be thoroughly soft. The vege- 
tables must be adapted to one another in both 
color and taste. Carrots and sweet potatoes, 
for instance, would not be good in combination 
because they are the same color. But carrots 
and peas or lima beans or string beans would 
be very attractive together. Celery is almost 
tasteless, — although it is pleasantly redolent 
when it is cooked, — so it should be put with 
canned corn or beets or tomatoes. 

Here is a suggestion for a casserole dish : 
In a frying-pan melt a tablespoonful of butter. 
Brown in it a quarter of a pound of ground 
steak and two sliced onions. Put these in a 
greased casserole, season them with salt, pep- 
per, a pinch of mace, and one of powdered 

100 



MEATS 

clove. On top of them put three pared and 
diced potatoes, season them, then pour half a 
can of tomatoes over the whole thing. The 
tomato liquid should come to the top of the po- 
tatoes ; if necessary, add enough cold water to 
fill out. On the very top put a. tablespoonful 
of washed, uncooked rice. Season the rice. 
Put a cover over the casserole and bake for an 
hour and a quarter in a moderately hot oven. 
It is done when the rice is crisp and brown. 
Serve in the casserole. If you use one of the 
enameled casseroles, do the preliminary brown- 
ing in it, too. 

Even small amounts of meat may be made 
into casserole dishes by putting vegetables 
with them and cooking the whole thing in a 
good sauce. If you have a small piece of round 
or sirloin steak, cooked or uncooked, left from 
another meal, you can cut it into little strips 
and combine it with a quarter of a can of to- 
matoes, a quarter of a can of corn, and a potato 
sliced thin, and bake it until the potato is soft. 
If the steak is uncooked, brown all of its sur- 
faces before putting it in the casserole. 

101 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

HOW MUCH MEAT TO BUY 

A sirloin steak weighing about a pound and 
a half will serve four persons. 

A small tenderloin steak will serve two, if 
it is cut thick. 

A porterhouse steak will serve four or five. 

It is a safe estimate to allow two chops for 
each person; or one double chop. 

One pound of liver will serve four persons. 

A meat loaf made from one pound of steak 
will serve three. 

A three- or four-pound piece of meat, baked 
or in a pot roast, will serve about six persons. 

One pound of ste wing-meat will hardly do for 
more than two persons, because of the amount 
of waste in bone and fat. 

In buying veal steak, pork steak, or round 
steak allow one pound for two persons. 



102 



in 

SAUCES 

It is obvious that in the cooKing anu serving 
of meat you are limited in point of variety only 
by the number of sauces you can invent. Take 
the serving of a veal cutlet, for instance. It 
may have a tomato sauce one day, a velvet sauce 
the next, a brown sauce, an onion sauce, a cheese 
sauce. And the difference in the taste of the 
cutlet will be surprising. The same is true of 
the serving of fish and vegetables. 

So it is important to understand the forma- 
tion of sauces. 

A sauce is, basicly, the juice extracted from 
meat, fish, or vegetables, separately or in com- 
bination. This juice may be gotten by putting 
soup in the sauce instead of water; by using, 
instead of butter, the grease left in the frying- 
pan after the meat has cooked in it, as the 
foundation of the sauce-thickening; by cooking 
for a short time sliced vegetables and herbs in 

103 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

butter, to extract their liquid ; or by using juice 
squeezed from uncooked fruits and vegetables. 

Which of these methods is to be used depends 
upon the occasion, the supplies on hand, and 
the demands of the particular sauce. 

A sauce is usually thickened a little. This 
is done by first mixing flour with butter or 
other grease that has been melted in a frying- 
pan, then adding the liquid element slowly, 
stirring all the time, and having the flame 
turned low. 

The color of the sauce will depend in large 
measure upon the way you prepare the thick- 
ening. If you leave the flour in the grease 
long enough to brown it, the sauce will be brown. 
If you add the liquid immediately after the flour 
is blended, the sauce will be white. Of course 
a dark soup stock added to the sauce will make 
it dark in any case. So will a few drops of 
kitchen bouquet, which will be found most use- 
ful in sauce-making. With the help of kitchen 
bouquet you can make a meaty, brown sauce to 
serve with warmed-up meat, even if you have 
no left-over soup or gravy. 

Here are some representative sauces: 
104 



SAUCES 
A 

If you are having stuffed pork chops (See 
Page 95), that have been baked with a little hot 
water around them, so that there will be no 
thick sauce with them when they are done, you 
can make a sauce in this way: Take the chops 
from their baking-pan and put the pan over the 
fire; it will have in it a mixture of grease and 
meat stock. With a tablespoon lift off most of 
the grease, leaving the browned stock in the 
pan. Put the grease in a small bowl, blend with 
it a tablespoonful of flour and pour a spoonful 
of liquid from the pan into the bowl. When 
the thickening is smooth add it to the liquid 
in the pan, then pour on enough soup stock or 
cold water to make as much sauce as you need. 
Season it with salt and pepper. When it is 
thick and boiling, serve it. 

If you find that the water has all boiled away, 
or if you roast the stuffed chops instead of 
baking them, simply add half a cupful of cold 
water co the grease in the pan, set it over a hot 
fire, season it and bring it to a boil, stirring 
vigorously to include in the sauce all particles 
of browned fat. 

105 



A PEIMEE OF COOKING 
B 

Suppose you are having broiled steak (See 
Page 90) and want a new sort of sauce to pour 
over it. In this case you will not have any resi- 
due of grease or liquid to use as a foundation 
for the sauce ; you will have to manufacture the 
whole thing. Put a tablespoonful of butter in 
a pan. Cut a small carrot into shreds, break 
up a branch of parsley, and season these with 
sage. Let them fry gently in the butter for a 
minute. Then pour two tablespoonfuls of milk 
over them and cover the pan. After they have 
simmered for ten minutes, strain the resulting 
liquid through a wire colander. Moisten half 
a tablespoonful of flour in a cup with half a 
tablespoonful of butter, then with a little of the 
vegetable liquid. Next add the thickening to 
the rest of the liquid. Bring it to the boiling- 
point and serve it over the steak. 



Or you may make a simpler sauce for a steak, 
or fish without any thickening element at all. 
Put the hot meat or fish on a hot platter and 
drop on each piece some unmelted butter which 
you have seasoned in a bowl with salt and a 

106 



SAUCES 

teaspoonful of either lemon juice or vinegar. 
The hot meat will melt the butter. Garnish 
this sauce, after it is on the platter, with 
chopped parsley or sliced celery stalks. 

D 

Another butter sauce is made by melting the 
butter in a saucepan, adding to it the juice of 
half an orange, and salt, pepper, and paprika, 
then beating it with a fork until it is foamy. 
Pour it over the meat. 

E 

Velvet sauce is very nourishing in itself. It 
uses the yolk of an egg in its preparation and 
is very good to serve with warmed-up white 
meat, such as veal, pork, lamb, or chicken. To 
make this sauce, melt a tablespoonful of grease 
in a pan and blend a tablespoonful of flour with 
it just long enough to make the mixture smooth. 
Add a cupful of either milk or water, cold. 
Stir this until the sauce is beginning to thicken, 
then set it off the fire. Beat an egg yolk in a 
bowl with a teaspoonful of cold water, added to 
make the egg blend easily. Season the egg. 
Add to it a little of the hot sauce, stirring hard. 

107 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

Then pour the egg mixture into the rest of the 
sauce. Put the saucepan over the fire again, 
but be sure to take it off before the sauce boils, 
or it will curdle. 

F 

A cheese sauce is made with the same foun- 
dation as velvet sauce, — ^butter, flour, and milk 
(water cannot be used). After the sauce is be- 
ginning to thicken, add half a cupful of sliced 
cheese to it and turn the flame down low, until 
the cheese melts. This sauce is thick and rich, 
and particularly fine to serve over an omelet 
or with a slice of halibut steak. 

a 

Then there are two other simple sauces, made 
without thickening. For roast beef, fried fish, 
or breaded meat, try a hot sauce vinaigrette. 
Warm together in a pan one tablespoonful of 
vinegar, two tablespoonfuls of olive-oil, salt, 
pepper, and the following things chopped fine : 
one onion, a slice of cabbage, a sprig of 
parsley, and a sweet pickle. Pour this over the 
meat or fish. 

108 



SAUCES 
H 

Tartar sauce may be served hot or cold. It 
is made of cream sauce — ^half a cupful of it — 
added to an equal amount of oil mayonnaise 
with the addition of a pinch of mustard, a sweet 
pickle cut fine, either two or three stuffed olives 
chopped or a teaspoonful of chopped capers. 
Serve tartar sauce with left-over meat or with 
fish of any kind. 

In order to have materials on hand for sauce- 
making, you will have to preserve every atom 
of food that has flavor in it. When you find 
half -wilted pieces of celery on a stalk, cut them 
up and cook them for an hour or so in cold, 
salted water. The resulting juice, strained, will 
make a delicious sauce for that evening ^s meat 
course. Use it instead of plain water. Cab- 
bage leaves may be treated in the same way, 
and so may any vegetables. Eadishes cooked 
for two hours or less will get soft enough to be 
pushed through a wire strainer. Season them 
with a dash of salt, pepper, and dry mustard. 
This semi-liquid you will discover to be a 
piquant sauce for halibut or fried oysters. 

Before washing a baking-pan, put a little cold 
109 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

water in it and with a spoon or a fork scrape 
down from the sides all brown particles. Let 
these come to a boil with the cold water. Sea- 
son the liquid and set it away to form the liquid 
part of your next dinner sauce. 

Note: A recipe for cream sauce is to be 
found on Page 56. 



110 



IV 
FISH 

Fish is already very tender when it is bought. 
So the cooking is never a long process. 

In all city fish-markets, now, the dealer will 
scale and clean the fish for you. This makes 
it possible for you to have fish two or three 
times a week without the trouble of preparation. 

Fresh fish may be fried, baked, broiled, or 
stuffed, just like meat. 

FRIED FISH 

Trout, bass, and perch are all adaptable to 
frying. Wash them first with cold water and 
dry them with a paper napkin. Salt them in- 
side and out. Dip them in milk, then in flour, 
and drop them into hot fat. Cook them fast 
until they are brown on both sides (this will 
take about eight minutes), then put them out 
on a hot platter garnished with a stalk of 
parsley that has cooked for a minute or two in 

111 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

the hot fat. Just before serving add a tea- 
spoonful of tomato sauce on top of each fish. 

If you want to fry a larger fish, such as a 
shad, cut it into several pieces first, meanwhile 
lifting out the backbone. 

BAKED FISH 

Any fish may be stuffed or baked. Wash it 
first and dry it. Make a stuffing of crumbled 
bread, a quarter of an onion minced fine, and 
salt and pepper. Lay this along one side of 
the fish and then squeeze lemon- juice over it. 
Close the other side of the fish down over the 
stuffing. Tie with string. Put the fish in a 
frying-pan with a little melted butter, and 
sprinkle flour over the skin. When it is 
browned in the butter, put a strip of bacon on 
top of the fish, add half a cup of boiling water, 
put the lid tightly on the pan, and bake in a 
moderate oven for half an hour. 

Instead of baking the stuffed fish you might 
grill it. Set it between the grilling racks and 
grill it as you would grill a beefsteak, starting 
with a hot fire to brown the skin, then lowering 

112 



FISH 

the flame to cook the fish through. The grill- 
ing will not take more than fifteen minutes. 

With baked or grilled fish a velvet sauce is 
good (See E, Page 107). Or you may use the 
simpler one of melted butter with lemon-juice 
(C, Page 106). 

FISH IN CASSEROLE 

If you can get a piece from the small end of 
a salmon or halibut, — weighing about two 
pounds, — you can make a baked casserole dish 
with a delicious sauce. Melt two tablespoon- 
fuls of butter in a pan and fry in it two small 
sliced onions, until the onions are soft. Add 
a cupful of tomato soup, let the soup heat, then 
season the sauce with salt and pepper. Put 
this in the bottom of a greased casserole, add 
the piece of fish, — ^washed and dried, — cover the 
casserole, and bake for half an hour in a mod- 
erately hot oven. It will be done when the 
fish falls away from the bone if you touch it 
with a fork. Serve in the casserole. Pickerel 
or whitefish may be baked in this same way. 

A very delicate way to cook either large or 
small fish is to chop up about a cupful of vege- 
tables and herbs, — mushrooms, parsley, onions, 

113 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

celery, and thyme. Then in a soup kettle or a 
casserole that can stand on top of the stove 
melt a tablespoonful of butter. Sprinkle a 
tablespoonful of flour over the butter and add 
half of the herbs. Lay on this one or two small 
fish, — ^washed, dried, and salted, — and cover 
them with a layer of bread crumbs. Put on 
next the other half of the herbs and add another 
layer of crumbs. Squeeze over this the juice 
of one lemon and add a cupful of some liquid, 
— ^preferably a vegetable or thin soup of meat, 
otherwise hot water. Cover the pan and cook 
on top of the stove, at simmering temperature, 
for half an hour. Serve all of this dish, using 
the herbs for a garnishing. 

HALIBUT 

Halibut is the most easily obtainable fish 
steak. The quickest way to cook it is to fry it, 
having first dipped it in milk, then in bread 
crumbs. Use two tablespoonfuls of cooking- 
fat for one slice of halibut. Brown each side 
in the hot fat, then turn the flame down low, 
cover the pan, and let the fish cook for twenty 
minutes. Serve it with tomato or cheese sauce 
(See F, Page 108). 

114 



FISH 

Or you may bake halibut, after you have 
dipped it in milk and bread crumbs. Have 
more cooking-fat in the pan than you would 
have for frying. Cover the baking-pan and 
set it in a rather slow oven for half an hour. 
Turn the halibut once during this time, to allow 
both sides to get brown. 

"When tomatoes are in season, try this way 
of baking halibut : Lay it in a frying-pan with 
melted butter. Season it well with salt and 
pepper, then slice tomatoes over the top of it. 
On top of the tomatoes put about half a cupful 
of shredded green peppers. Season these and 
bake in a moderately hot oven, with no lid on 
the pan, until the top of the fish is brown. 
Serve with a dab of unmelted butter on top of 
the halibut. 

Halibut may be poached, if you want to make 
a very elaborate, decorative dish of it. In a 
frying-pan melt a tablespoonful of butter. 
Cook gently in it, for a few minutes, one small 
sliced onion. Stir in a tablespoonful of flour, 
blend it with the butter and onion, and add a 
cup of milk. Season this sauce. Bring it to 

115 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

a boil, stirring it. Then add to it a few thin 
shreds of carrot. Lay the halibut in the pan. 
Cover the pan and cook the fish at the simmer- 
ing-point for about twenty-five minutes. Lift 
the lid occasionally, baste the top of the fish 
and lift the slice with a spatula to let the sauce 
run under it. About five minutes before the 
halibut is done, light the oven. Then, after the 
poaching is done, set the pan under the flame 
of the grill to brown the fish and sauce. Serve 
it covered with sauce. 

SAXMON IiOAF 

Canned salmon may be made into several 
quickly cooked dishes. Perhaps the most prac- 
tical of them is salmon loaf. This is really a 
form of souffle. To make it, drain a pound 
can of salmon and separate the fish from the 
bones and skin. In a greased baking-dish that 
has a rounded bottom, beat two eggs. Salt 
them. Add the salmon and mash it down to 
mix it thoroughly with the egg. Add about a 
quarter of a cup of milk. Set the baking-dish 
in a moderately hot oven. In twenty minutes 
or less the loaf will be done, with the top of it 
firm and brown. Have a hot platter ready to 

116 



FISH 

receive it. Then, with a blunt knife or a 
spatula loosen the loaf around the edges and 
run the knife underneath. Drop it out upside 
down on the platter. Pour over it a cream 
sauce (See Page 56) or any piquant sauce you 
can make from vegetable liquid, — such as rad- 
ish or celery sauce (See Page 109). Be sure not 
to take the loaf out of the baking-dish until it 
is firm on top. 

SAIiMON PIE 

A salmon pie is made by creaming the salmon 
first, — a cupful of plain cream sauce to a can 
of salmon, — then by putting the creamed sal- 
mon in the bottom of a greased shallow baking- 
dish. Cover the top with pie crust. Bake in 
a hot oven until the crust is brown; about ten 
or fifteen minutes. 

BAKED TUNA 

A tasty dish is to be made of a can of tuna 
fish combined with a cupful or more of mashed 
potatoes. Butter a baking-dish. Beat an egg 
and mix the tuna fish with it. Add and mix 
the mashed potato and half a cup of milk. Put 
this in the baking-dish and bake it without a 

117 



A PEIMER OF COOKINa 

lid, in a hot oven, until the top is brown. Serve 
with a hot sauce vinaigrette (See B, Page 108). 

OYSTER SOUP 

Since oyster soup does not fall precisely un- 
der the category of soups, it must be treated by 
itself. 

You can see that in the making of oyster soup, 
the important point is to conserve for the soup 
every particle of oyster flavor. So never wash 
the oysters first, and particularly never throw 
away the oyster liquor. This latter is of vital 
importance to the piquancy of the soup. But 
look the oysters over carefully, before using 
them, to make sure there are no bits of shell 
sticking to them. 

In a saucepan melt a tablespoonful of butter, 
blend a tablespoonful of flour with it, and slowly 
stir in a pint of milk, — or, if necessary, half 
milk and half water. Stir the mixture until it 
is smooth. Then add a quarter of a pint, — 
or more if you like, — of small oysters, and as 
much liquid as you can drain off from them. 
Season the soup with salt, pepper, and paprika. 
Keep it below the boiling-point and cook it until 

118 



FISH 

the gills of the oysters curl up. Serve it while 
it is still at the simmering-point. If you want 
it to be very inviting-looking, add a little but- 
ter to it, just before you take it from the stove. 

FRIED OYSTERS 

Fried oysters are very simple to prepare. 
Use large-sized ones. Drain them. Put them 
in pairs, with the gills at opposite ends. Have 
a beaten egg in a bowl and a shallow dish of 
bread or cracker crumbs. Dip each pair of 
oysters first in egg, then in crumbs, and lastly 
drop it into hot cooking-fat. This fat need 
not be abundant enough to cover the oysters. 
Use about three tablespoonfuls to a pint of 
oysters. When the under side of each fried 
oyster is crisp and brown, turn it, but not be- 
fore ; turning it too soon would make the oysters 
separate. Keep the fire at moderate heat. 
Don't cover the pan; that would make the oys- 
ters soggy. They will fry in from ten to fif- 
teen minutes. 

Serve with the oysters the following sauce: 
Drop a little flour into the fat the oysters cooked 
in. Stir a tablespoonful of catsup with it. Add 
the juice of a whole lemon and half a cupful of 

119 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

water. With the flame up high, stir this sauce 
rapidly and when it is bubbling pour it into a 
sauce-boat, to be served at the table. 

HOW MUCH FISH TO BUY 

One pound of halibut will serve two persons. 

Allow at least two small fried fish to a serv- 
ing. 

A large fish, such as shad, weighing over two 
pounds, will serve three or four. 

One pound can of salmon will make a salmon 
loaf large enough for three persons. 

Use a small can or half of a big one, for a 
salmon pie for two. 

One can of tuna fish will make a baked dish 
for three. 

Allow three or four fried oysters to a person. 
One pint will make enough fried oysters for 
two persons, and will leave plenty for oyster 
soup. 

One pint of milk will make oyster soup — al- 
lowing for large portions — ^for two. 



120 



POULTRY 

Before ordering or choosing a chicken be sure 
that you have decided upon the way you are 
going to cook it, because your requirements in 
the matter of size and age will depend upon that 
alone. If it is a young f rying-chicken you want, 
or a chicken to broil, it must not weigh more 
than a small fraction over a pound. For fried 
chicken for more than two people you will need 
a fowl weighing about two and one half pounds. 
For a chicken fricassee get a four-pound 
chicken. For roasting, about a three-pound 
one. 

Young frying-chickens, or broilers, can be 
had during July, August, and September. In 
the late autumn and early winter months the 
older chickens are at their cheapest. 

The chicken will come from the retail dealer 
— in practically every case without special re- 
quest on your part — dressed and partly cleaned. 

121 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

The first thing for you to do is to singe the skin, 
to get off the hairs. Do this over some flame 
other than gas, in order not to get its fumes 
into the skin. A tallow taper is a very good 
thing to use, if it is obtainable ; but the easiest 
thing to keep on hand for this purpose is a can- 
dle. Hold the chicken over the flame, turning 
it and letting it hang first by one leg, then by 
the other, until the heat has reached every part 
of the surface. After the singeing, wash the 
skin under running cold water 

Next comes the cleaning of the chicken, which 
the dealer will have done more or less thor- 
oughly, putting back the parts which are edible. 
You will find, inserting your hand into the 
opening cut at the tail end, the heart, the liver, 
the gizzard, and the neck, the first three of 
which are called the giblets. The liver will pos- 
sibly be in one or two pieces ; the mutilation of 
it will be due to the difficulty of removing from 
it the gall bladder, which lies on its under sur- 
face. The dealer will have opened the gizzard, 
taken out the craw, and left the gizzard 
smoothed out and clean. 

With the giblets taken out and the neck re- 
moved, it will be easy to look in to see if the 

122 



POULTRY 

lungs and kidneys have been removed. Often 
these are not touched by the dealer, because 
they are in rather remote places and because 
their removal is not absolutely essential. The 
lungs are found one on each side of the back- 
bone ; they cling to the ribs, and are easily rec- 
ognized by their red color. The kidneys are 
at the end of the backbone, resting in a slight 
depression. 

You will know that the chicken is thoroughly 
cleaned when you can see no red particles in- 
side. When you are sure of this, let cold water 
run through it, — making an outlet for the water 
at the neck end, if there is not already one, — 
until the water finally runs out clear. 

Clean the giblets by cutting away from them 
any extraneous-looking membranes, or pieces of 
fat. Cut through the heart to the center of it 
and take out a little blood vessel you will find 
there. Wash the giblets under cold running 
water. 

The chicken is now ready for stuffing, if it 
is to be roasted. 

BOAST CHICKEN 

Wipe the chicken inside and out with a damp 
123 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

cloth covered with salt. Light the oven with 
a brisk flame. Then make a stuffing of two 
cupfuls of crumbled bread, seasoned with salt, 
pepper, and leaf sage, dampened with just 
enough milk to hold the mass together. Fill 
the chicken with the stuffing, putting it in from 
the tail end, then stick one big piece of bread 
in the opening, as a plug. (This should be 
taken out when the chicken is done.) Melt two 
tablespoonfuls of cooking-fat in the roaster, lay 
the chicken in, on its back, sprinkle it lightly 
with flour, and let it brown in the oven, with the 
lid off the roaster, for above five minutes. Turn 
the chicken several times, during this period, 
to expose all the surfaces. Then add three cup- 
fuls of hot water to the pan, drop in the giblets 
cut into inch-square pieces, cover the pan, and 
continue the cooking at a moderate heat until 
the chicken seems tender when it is touched with 
a fork. Halfway through the cooking salt the 
chicken and giblets. Baste two or three times. 
Add more hot water if necessary. 

An hour or an hour and a half should be an 
adequate length of time for the roasting of a 
three-pound chicken. 

124 



POULTEY 

When the chicken is done, get it out on a hot 
platter and make a milk gravy to serve with it. 
This is done by dissolving a heaping tablespoon- 
ful of flour in enough milk to cover it, then 
adding half a cup of milk to this, stirring until 
the milk is even in consistency, and lastly add- 
ing it to the liquid left in the roasting-pan. Sea- 
son this gravy and stir it until it boils and 
thickens. Leave the giblets in the gravy. 

BROILED CHICKEN 

Cut the chicken in half, splitting it along the 
back and through the breast. Follow the di- 
rections given for the broiling of steak on Page 
90, but have a slower fire, and test the flesh with 
a fork, to determine when it is cooked thor- 
oughly. It will cook in about twenty minutes. 

FRIED CHICKEN 

To prepare a chicken for frying you must 
first cut it into pieces. This will require the 
sharpest knife you have. For ease in cutting 
and to get an approximate uniformity in the 
size of the pieces, it will be best to follow this 
general plan: 

Holding the chicken on its back, take one of 
125 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

the legs in your left hand, while with the knife 
in your right hand you slash down through the 
skin close to the body. Do not be afraid of 
cutting away too much skin from around the 
leg. Then bend the leg back until the bone sepa- 
rating it from the body cracks; cut between 
the interstices of the broken bone and remove 
the leg. In the same way, having turned the 
chicken around so that the remaining leg is at 
your left, cut off the other leg. Cut through 
each leg as near as possible to the joint in the 
middle, which you can locate by feeling for it. 
Then you will have the thigh pieces separated* 
from the drumsticks. Cut off each wing next. 
This will be easy to do, because there is no 
hard bone to cut through. Then cut off the end 
of the back, running the knife along just below 
the ribs. Next separate the rest of the back 
from the breast by following the ends of the 
ribs and cutting as far as the collar-bone. 
Lastly slit the breast down, keeping near to the 
center bone. The piece of neck that will be 
found attached to the end of the breast-bone 
may be left on, and that piece of breast-bone 
will do for soup-making or for stewing. After 

126 



POULTRY 

cutting the chicken up, wash every piece in 
running water. 

If it is a young frying-chicken, weighing 
scarcely more than a pound, it is ready to be 
fried immediately. Roll each piece in flour and 
drop into a frying-pan in which three or four 
tablespoonfuls of cooking-fat are sizzling. 
Brown the pieces over a quick fire, until they 
are the same color all over. Then put a lid 
on the pan, turn the flame down, and continue 
the cooking for five or ten minutes, or until the 
chicken is tender. 

If the chicken is a good-sized one, it will need 
parboiling before it can be fried until tender. 
Put the pieces in a soup kettle, with salt, pepper, 
and not quite enough cold water to cover them. 
Bring the water slowly to a boil, with the kettle 
covered, then simmer for as long as is neces- 
sary to get the chicken tender. Ten or fifteen 
minutes will do for a young fowl, but an older 
one may require an hour's time. Test the de- 
gree of tenderness, from time to time, by lift- 
ing up bits of the flesh with a fork. When the 
chicken is tender take the pieces out of the 
water, roll them in flour, and fry them fast. 

127 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

They will not need to cook in the frying-pan 
after they are brown. 

BBAISED CHiaEEN 

Instead of parboiling the chicken first, you 
may fry it, after rolling it in flour, then put it 
in a baking-pan which has been greased, cover 
it with about four cups of water, put the lid 
on the baking-pan, and allow the chicken to 
bake at a rather low heat for two hours. 

CHICKEN FRICASSEE 

This is a variation of braised chicken, cooked 
in a casserole. Parboil the chicken, allowing it 
to remain only a short time in the water; half 
an hour should be long enough, even for a four- 
pound chicken. Then brown the pieces in hot 
fat, and pack them into a deep casserole. Add 
a tablespoonful of flour to the grease left in 
the frying-pan, blend the grease and flour until 
the flour is brown, then add slowly a pint of 
milk, stirring until the milk begins to thicken. 
Pour this sauce over the chicken. Season with 
celery salt and pepper. Add half a can of 
mushrooms cut into halves, a green pepper 
shredded, a piece of pimiento cut fine and two 
medium-sized sweet potatoes run through the 

128 



POULTEY 

meat-grinder. Cover the casserole and bake 
the chicken in a moderately hot oven until it 
is tender, or for about two hours. 

CHICKEN POT PIE 

For a pot pie choose a two-and-a-half -pound 
chicken. Cut it up, brown the pieces quickly in 
hot fat, then put them in a stewing-pan with 
enough boiling water to come half-way up the 
bulk. Cover the pan and simmer until tender. 
About twenty minutes before it is done add 
seasoning, two or three potatoes cut into quar- 
ters, and a bunch of new onions, cut in halves ; 
cook for ten minutes, then add dumplings (See 
Page 98). Serve in fifteen minutes. The whole 
process of cooking will take from one to two 
hours. 

CHICKEN BROTH 

Let the water in which the pieces of chicken 
were parboiled for frying or fricasseeing go 
on simmering for an hour or two after the 
chicken has been taken out of it. Leave the 
giblets in, and the neck, and any other pieces 
— the wings, for instance — ^which are not very 
meaty. Allow the broth to stand overnight, so 
that you can remove the fat from it (See Chap- 

129 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

ter on Soups). Then warm it up the next day 
with two tablespoonfuls of rice to cook in it to 
thicken it. Pick the meat from the wings and 
add that to the broth. 

GIBIiETS ON TOAST 

After the giblets have served their purpose 
for making broth, they may be cut up fine and 
rewarmed in cream sauce (See Page 56) and 
served on rounds of toast for a breakfast or 
lunch dish. 

OmCKEN SALAD 

This is an appetizing and attractive way to 
serve left-over chicken. Cut it from the bones, 
removing skin and gristle, and dice it. Add to 
it celery cut into small pieces, sweet pickle, pi- 
miento, green peppers shredded, — or whatever 
you have at hand that seems appropriate. Put 
the salad together with oil mayonnaise (See 
Page 154). Serve a slice of chilled beet on top 
of each plate of salad, if practicable. 

TURKEY, DUCK AND GOOSE 

Turkey, duck, and goose must be singed and 
cleaned exactly like chicken. 

In stuffing them for roasting it will be found 
130 



POULTRY 

necessary to sew up the open places through 
which the stuffing was put. In stuffing goose 
include one onion, cut up fine, with the bread 
crumbs. Duck needs a hot fire during the whole 
process of roasting. If it is a young duck it 
will roast in from three quarters of an hour to 
an hour. Goose will require one and a half to 
three hours. Turkey needs about two and a 
half hours. 

HOW MUCH POULTRY TO BUY 

For seven or eight persons a roast turkey 
weighing about eleven pounds will be enough. 

For the same number of persons two roast 
ducks, or a large goose will be needed. 

A capon (a chicken fattened especially for 
the market) which is tenderer and has a more 
delicate flavor than chicken, and fatter, will 
serve five persons. 

One roast chicken weighing about three 
pounds, will serve three or four. 

One chicken weighing two and a half pounds 
will make enough salad for four. 

Fricasseed chicken in casserole, may be made 
to serve as many as six, or as few as two, ac- 
cording to the quantity of other ingredients you 

131 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

put in to cook with it. Where there is a four- 
pound chicken, it is good plan to fricassee half 
of it, for two or three persons, then to use the 
rest for salad, or creamed on toast. 

In general, a chicken weighing under two 
pounds will serve only two. 



132 



VI 

POTATOES, RICE, AND MACARONI 

If you treat potatoes, in your cooking of 
them, as if they were a rare vegetable ; if you 
are continually in search of strange new ways 
to fix them ; and if you serve just a little of them 
at a time rather than a big tureenful, you will 
find that you can make them the most interest- 
ing item of a meal. 

STEAMED POTATOES 

By far the best way to cook them is to steam 
them in a steam boiler. For this they should 
be cut into quarters, without being pared, and 
put into the boiler without liquid, salted, and 
with each piece of potato dotted with butter. 
They should be soft in three quarters of an 
hour. Cooked this way they will be flaky and 
perfectly seasoned. They may be served just 
as they are, — ^with the skins removed before 
they are put on the table, — or they may be 

133 



A PEIMEE OF COOKINa 

skinned, and mashed with a fork with a little 
more milk and butter added. Let them stay in 
the steamer for a few minutes to absorb the 
milk, then serve them. 

BOILED POTATOES 

An objection to steaming is that it takes 
longer than boiling. Often you will not have 
time to wait. You can get almost the same 
flaky effect from boiling potatoes, if you boil 
them properly. Select as small ones as pos- 
sible and of course choose ones as nearly as 
possible uniform in size. Wash them with a 
vegetable brush and drop them into boiling, 
salted water. Cook for from twenty minutes 
to half an hour, or until you can see, by testing 
them with a fork, that they are soft. Have no 
lid on the saucepan. When they are done, drain 
them, then put them back in the pan, on the 
fire, with the burner turned very low, and the 
pan covered. Leave them there for several 
minutes, to dry out the excess moisture. Serve 
them on a deep plate, covered with a napkin 
to keep their heat in. 

Unless they are to be eaten plain-boiled or 
mashed, it is better to boil potatoes several 

134 



POTATOES, EICE, AND MACARONI 

hours before they are to be used, and to let 
them cool. They harden a little as they cool 
and become easier to dice or slice, for frying, 
for creaming, for making into an au gratin dish, 
or for salad (See Page 45). 

BAKED POTATOES 

Baked potatoes need careful cooking. Scrub 
the potatoes first, with a vegetable brush, then 
rub the whole skin over with lard or vegetable 
fat. This is to lubricate the skin and to keep 
the potato from getting too dry. Have a mod- 
erate fire in the oven ; too hot a fire will harden 
the skins and cook the potato unevenly. Me- 
dium-sized potatoes will bake in three quarters 
of an hour. As soon as they are done slash 
each one with a slit about two inches long, to 
let out the steam. Serve them in a covered 
tureen, with a piece of butter pushed into each 
opening. 

STUFFED POTATOES 

Stuffed potatoes are made from baked ones. 
Cut each potato in half lengthwise, scoop out 
the contents, and mix this together in a bowl 
with warm milk, butter, and pepper and salt. 
Use just enough milk to moisten the potato. 

135 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

Put the potato back in the shells, set these in 
a shallow baking-pan in the oven, with a hot 
flame, and leave them there until they are brown 
on top. 

MASHED POTATOES 

If you are in a great hurry to get potatoes 
boiled, for mashing, pare them before you put 
them to boil and cut them in small pieces. Pre- 
pared this way they will get soft in ten or fif- 
teen minutes To mash them, drain them, set 
them back in their pan on the stove for a min- 
ute to dry, then mash them thoroughly, getting 
out all the lumps. In a small saucepan heat 
almost to the boiling-point half a cup of milk 
and a tablespoonful of butter seasoned with 
salt and pepper. Add this to the mashed pota- 
toes, beat with a spoon until the mixture is light, 
and serve in a covered dish. 

If you want to serve mashed potatoes in a 
very attractive way, spread them, after they 
are mashed, over a buttered pie pan. Set this 
under the grill of a hot oven until the top of the 
potato is uniformly brown. Garnish a steak 
platter, or a dish of chops, with this browned 
potato. 

136 



POTATOES, EICE, AND MACARONI 

FRIED POTATOES 

They are very attractive fried whole. After 
they have been steamed or boiled in their skins 
and allowed to cool, peel them and drop them 
into a frying-pan with hot fat. It will take 
only a few minutes to brown them, if you keep 
the fire high, and turn them often. Salt them 
while they are browning. 

If you have a vegetable scoop, that will shape 
things into balls, you may use this on boiled 
potatoes before frying them, to make them into 
a decorative garnish. Otherwise, slice the po- 
tatoes, drop them into hot melted fat, salt them, 
and with a broad-bladed knife chop them as they 
brown, into small pieces. Have a brisk flame 
under the pan. 

Plain raw-fried potatoes can be prepared in 
about fifteen minutes. Have a tablespoonful of 
cooking-fat melted in the frying-pan. Pare and 
slice as finely as you can one or two large po- 
tatoes. Put them in the pan, salt them, and 
cover the pan tight. Let the potatoes cook over 
a moderately high flame, occasionally taking 
off the lid to turn the mass with a spatula, as 
the under side browns. Test the potatoes with 

137 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

a fork, and as soon as they are soft and 
browned, serve them. 

HASHED BROWN POTATOES 

Hashed brown potatoes are an elaborated 
form of plain fried ones. They must be finely 
cut, so run them through the meat grinder. Mix 
with them a small ground onion, salt, pepper, 
and ground parsley. Melt butter or cooking- 
fat in a frying-pan, — ^not more than a table- 
spoonful for four potatoes, — and when the fat 
is hot drop the potatoes in. With a spatula 
flatten the mass down into a roll at one side of 
the pan. When it is brown underneath turn it, 
keeping the roll as compact as possible. Brown 
the second side, and serve immediately. 

POTATOES AU GRATIN 

Potatoes au gratin are baked creamed pota- 
toes, with cheese and bread crumbs added. 
Peel and cut into dice two or three boiled po- 
tatoes. Make a cream sauce with one table- 
spoonful each of butter and flour and a cup of 
milk. When this is thick and seasoned drop 
the potatoes into it. Grease a baking-dish, put 
a layer of bread crumbs in the bottom of it, 

138 



POTATOES, EICE, AND MACARONI 

then a layer of creamed potatoes. On top of 
this put a layer of mild cheese cut into slivers. 
Repeat the layers until the potato is all used. 
Put a few bread crumbs on top. Set the baking- 
dish, uncovered, in a hot oven until the top 
crumbs are brown. 

When you are frying steak or chops you can 
very easily cook potatoes with the meat. (See 
Pages 89 and 91.) But it will be necessary to 
have them sliced very fine so that the pieces 
will not be more than an eighth of an inch thick. 
A good plan is to cut each potato in strips 
lengthwise, then cut each strip into a number 
of small strips. Put these in the pan with the 
cooking-fat about five minutes before you put 
the meat in. Salt them and let them cook with 
a moderately slow fire with a lid on the pan. 
They will cook in their own liquid. 

When you put in the meat, pile the potatoes 
to one side of the pan, as much away from the 
hottest flame as possible. Or you can take them 
out of the pan and heat them up again after the 
meat is cooked. Serve the potato strips as a 
garnish for the meat. Sweet potatoes are more 
decorative for this purpose than Irish ones, 

139 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

RICE 

Rice, to be dry and flaky, must be cooked 
rapidly in plenty of boiling salted water. Half 
a cupful of rice will make about two cupfuls, 
cooked. Wash the rice by holding it under cold 
running water in a wire colander. "When the 
salted water is boiling fast, drop the rice in 
and leave the lid off the pan while the rice cooks. 
Twenty-five minutes' boiling should be enough 
to make it soft. Drain it in a wire colander 
and turn it into a tureen. Put dabs of butter 
on top of it, then cover the tureen. 

A half-cupful of rice will, when boiled, be 
enough for two persons. 

MACARONI AND NOODLES 

Cook macaroni and noodles — unless you are 
cooking them in soup — just as you cook rice. 
Wash them first, break them up, then boil them 
rapidly for about twenty-five minutes. Drain 
them. Reheat them in a brown sauce, or in 
tomato sauce with a piece of cheese melted in 
it, or simply fry them brown in hot butter and 
serve them with Parmesan cheese grated over 
them. 

140 



POTATOES, EICE, AND MACARONI 

One third of a standard package of macaroni 
or noodles will serve two persons. 

HOW MANY POTATOES TO USE 

Steamed or boiled, two small ones to a per- 
son. 

Baked, one large one or two small ones. 

Stuffed, two to a person. 

Mashed, one large one or two small ones for 
each person to be served, with two more added. 

Fried, one or less for each person. 

An gratin, one or less for each person. 

Raw-fried, one small one for each person. 



141 



VII 

GEEEN VEGETABLES 

Of vegetables in general the most important 
fact to be remembered is that they should not 
be served with cream sance. 

Peas, carrots, lima beans, and string-beans, 
asparagus, and even mushrooms are all too 
often merged into one individuality by being 
heated in a thick white sauce which calls at- 
tention only to itself. These vegetables have 
delicate flavors of their own, each one distinct. 
It is only by developing the flavors that you can 
use them to advantage. 

When the vegetables are new and green their 
delicacy is of course more marked. Cook them 
the day they are picked, if possible, or at least 
before they are more than two days old. Peas, 
lima beans, and string-beans, carrots, and as- 
paragus should be put to cook in a covered 
saucepan with barely enough boiling salted 

142 



GEEEN VEGETABLES 

water to cover them. Let them simmer until 
they are soft (the time will vary with the vege- 
tables). Just before they are done add a little 
butter to them, and when this has been thor- 
oughly absorbed, they will be ready to serve. 
Carrots, before being cooked, must be pared 
and cut into dice. 

Any of these vegetables may be reheated, 
after being cooked until soft, in a frying-pan 
with steak or chops. (See Pages 89 and 91.) 
This will bring out their flavor and give them 
the tang of the meat. Mushrooms are so soft 
in their natural state that they will need only 
this one cooking to make them ready for the 
table. Cut them fine and leave them in the fry- 
ing-pan with the meat for five or six minutes. 

There are more complex ways of reheating 
vegetables, either fresh or canned. One way is 
to make a sort of soup of an onion sliced and 
fried slowly in butter until it is soft. A cup 
of water is added and allowed to come to a boil. 
Put the vegetable in this (asparagus is espe- 
cially good treated so) and as soon as the mix- 
ture is hot turn it into a tureen to serve. Cover 
with bits of butter, before taking to the table. 

143 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

BEETS 

Beets, if they are new ones, will need from an 
hour to an hour and a half to soften ; old beets 
must cook for several hours. Before putting 
the beets to boil wash them and cut olf the tops, 
leaving about an inch of the stem on the beet. 
After they have softened in plenty of boiling, 
salted water, drain them, plunge them for a few 
minutes into cold water, and skin them. They 
are ready then to be reheated for the table. 

This sauce is very often used for them. Melt 
a tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan, add to 
it a tablespoonful of flour, blend the two, stir 
into them half a cup of vinegar and a table- 
spoonful of sugar. Into this, when it has 
boiled, drop the beets, sliced. Serve hot. 

Beets may be warmed up in butter alone, with 
lemon-juice squeezed over them while they are 
in the pan. 

6BEEN OOBN 

Com on the cob will cook in boiling (salted) 
water, in about twenty minutes. 

CABBAGE 

If you are going to cook cabbage, cut it into 
144 



GEEEN VEGETABLES 

quarters first, and take out the hard center. 
Have salted water boiling hard, in a wide cook- 
ing kettle. Drop the pieces of cabbage in and 
leave the lid off the pan while the cabbage cooks 
fast for twenty minutes. Cooked in this way 
the cabbage will have scarcely any odor. 

Drain the cabbage when it is done, and pre- 
pare it for the table by chopping it with a knife 
and spoon until it is minced. Then make a 
cream sauce (See Page 56). Cabbage is the one 
exception to the cream-sauce rule; this is be- 
cause its flavor is vigorous enough not to be 
dominated. Season the sauce and put the 
minced cabbage in it. Put the cabbage and 
sauce in a greased flat baking-dish and set it 
under the flame of the oven grill until it is brown 
on top. 

CELERY 

Celery makes a dainty cooked vegetable. 
Like mushrooms, it can be cooked enough by 
including it in a frying-pan with meat. Treated 
in this way it will still keep some of its crisp- 
ness and get brown, as it cooks. If it is boiled 
in salted water for twenty minutes it will be 
soft. Drain it, — ^being sure to keep the cook- 

145 



A PKIMER OF COOKING 

ing-water to use for a sauce at another meal, — 
and reheat it in a brown or a cheese sauce, or 
simply fry it in butter and add a half-teaspoon- 
ful of tomato sauce to it just before you take it 
from the fire. Celery needs a pungent sea- 
soning. 

OAimED VEGETABLES 

Canned vegetables need only to be drained 
and reheated in melted butter, in a frying-pan 
with meat, or in casserole combinations. 

BASED BEAirS 

Dried navy beans must be washed and soaked 
over night in cold water. One cupful will make 
a medium-sized baking-dish full of baked beans. 
After the beans have soaked, drain them and 
cook them in boiling salted water until they are 
soft, which will be in about an hour and a half. 
Then light the oven, with a moderately hot 
flame. Put the beans, with enough of their 
cooking-water to cover them, in a shallow bak- 
ing-dish, — or in a bean-pot if you have one, — • 
and add two table spoonfuls of molasses and two 
slices of either bacon or salt pork. Put the 
baking-dish or the pot in the oven and bake un- 
til the beans get brown and absorb most of the 

146 



GREEN VEGETABLES 

water around them. Keep adding hot water 
if they get dry before they are brown. They 
will require from one hour to an hour and a 
half to bake. 

DRIED LIMA BEANS 

Dried lima beans will not need to soak over- 
night. After you have washed them under run- 
ning water, in a colander, put them to cook in 
just enough boiling salted water to cover them. 
Let them simmer with a lid on the pan for two 
hours, or until they are soft. To serve them, 
pour off (and save, for cooking purposes), all 
their water but a cupful. Stir a teaspoonful 
of cornstarch with a teaspoonful of cold water 
in a cup until the cornstarch is dissolved. Add 
it slowly to the beans and stir them until they 
come to a boil. Serve in a covered tureen. 

TOMATOES 

Fresh tomatoes make a very substantial dish, 
baked. Wash them, cut off a slice from the 
stem end, and scoop out a spoonful of the in- 
side. Salt the hollow, and fill it with crumbled 
bread, seasoned with salt and sweetened with 
a pinch of granulated sugar. Put the tomatoes 

147 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

in a shallow baking-dish, containing a cupful 
of hot water, and bake in a hot oven, uncovered, 
until the tomatoes are soft and the bread crumbs 
brown. Canned com or green beans of any- 
kind may be used for a stuffing instead of bread. 

Or you can fry tomatoes. Wash them and 
cut them into thick slices, making only three 
slices out of one tomato. Put these in a fry- 
ing-pan with two table spoonfuls of melted fat, 
flour each slice, and fry them until they are 
soft, over a slow fire. Serve them either alone 
or on hot toast. If you like you can make a 
sauce to go over them by mixing half a table- 
spoonful of flour with the grease in the pan, 
then pouring on enough cold water to make a 
thin sauce. Add some chopped parsley and 
seasoning and let the sauce come to a boil. 
Pour it over the fried tomatoes. 

ONIONS 

Onions may be stuffed and baked just like 
tomatoes. Tomatoes themselves make a good 
stuffing for the onions. Use only a teaspoonful 
of stewed tomato to each onion. Bake the on- 
ions in a shallow pan in a little hot water or 

milk. 

148 



GEEEN VEGETABLES 

HOW MANY VEGETABLES TO BUY 

A standard can of vegetables will serve three 
or four persons. 

One cup of dried lima-beans will make enough 
for two. 

One pound of green peas will serve two. 

One-half pound of string beans will serve two. 

One pint of green lima-beans (shelled) will 
serve three. 

Two medium-sized carrots will serve two. 

One bunch of asparagus will serve two. 

One bunch of beets, or a pound of old ones, 
will serve three or four. 

Allow two or more ears of com to a person. 

One large head of cabbage will serve four 
persons. 

One pound of tomatoes, or two or three large 
ones, baked, will serve two. Two medium-sized 
ones, fried, will serve two. Sliced, one large 
one will be enough for two 

Allow one or two onions, either baked oi: 
stewed, to a person. 



149 



VIII 
SALADS 

To be able to make salads comfortably and 
on short notice you will need a medium-sized 
mixing-bowl, an egg-beater, a wooden fork and 
spoon, a pair of kitchen scissors, a lettuce bag 
made of mosquito netting or some other loosely 
woven goods, and a soft napkin to dry lettuce 
in. 

Think of salad as something crisp and cold, — 
the most succulent part of dinner. Plan it to 
fill its place adequately but not too well: a 
heavy fruit salad with mayonnaise would make 
your dinner top-heavy, unless the salad were to 
be salad and dessert in one; and a fish or a 
meat salad would be inappropriate. Potato 
salad with dinner would not only be too heavy, 
but it would more than likely repeat the potato 
element which had been served with the main 
course. 

Make your salads so that they will be easy 
to eat. Shredding the lettuce will help, and 

150 



SALADS 

dicing the vegetables or fruit. Tomatoes, if 
they are served whole, should have their skins 
taken off first to make them soft enough to be 
cut with a fork. 

There are two basic salad dressings. And 
these tend to separate salads themselves into 
two main divisions. French dressing, made of 
an oil and an acid, with seasoning, is generally 
used with light salads, — those made of lettuce 
alone, or of lettuce with some light added ele- 
ment such as asparagus tips or string-beans in 
small quantity. Mayonnaise goes with sub- 
stantial fruit and vegetable salads, tuna fish, 
and salmon. 

FB£NCH DBESSINQ 

French dressing is so easy to make that it is 
much better to mix it fresh every time you need 
it than to make it in quantity and set it away. 
It should not simply be poured over the salad 
ingredients. That would not mix it with them. 
It would leave the oil and the acid separate, 
and the seasoning half with the oil, half with 
the acid. French dressing should be made and 
added to the salad all in one operation. 

If the salad is to be of lettuce and a small 
151 



A PRIMEK OF COOKING 

quantity of some cooked vegetable, — ^beets, for 
instance, — shred the lettuce, after you have 
dried it in a napkin, and put it in the mixing- 
bowl. Pour a teaspoonful of vinegar or lemon- 
juice into the bowl and stir vigorously with a 
wooden spoon until the lettuce has been well 
moistened with it. Put a pinch of salt in the 
spoon, fill the spoon with oil, and with the fork 
stir the oil until the salt is dissolved. Then 
add the oil to the lettuce and stir the salad 
again. Sprinkle with white pepper and 
paprika. Add the sliced or diced beets, toss 
them around once or twice to let them absorb 
the dressing, — ^but not forcefully enough to 
force out their juices, — and serve the salad at 
once. 

Never mix lettuce with French dressing un- 
til just before you want to serve it. The acid 
will draw the water from the lettuce and wilt 
it. But if you are going to serve a heavy salad 
of vegetables with French dressing, — a salad 
in which the lettuce is only for garnishing, — 
mix the vegetables with the dressing at least 
half an hour before the meal. This gives them 
time to absorb the oil and vinegar thoroughly. 
At the last minute put the salad on lettuce. 

152 



SALADS 

VABIATIONS OF FRENCH DRESSING 

Plain French dressing may be varied by the 
addition of new seasonings. Worcestershire 
sauce may be used with the vinegar, half and 
half. If you chop up a branch of parsley and 
a sour pickle or a stuffed olive, and add them to 
the salad when you add the vinegar, you will 
have a vinaigrette dressing, which will do very 
well to serve with left-over fish or with a tart 
salad of apples and cream cheese. With salads 
of fruit, lemon-juice is better to use than vine- 
gar because it is milder. With lettuce alone, 
vinegar will be better. Catsup, tomato sauce, 
ground onion, dry mustard, chopped capers, 
and orange-juice may all be used, with discre- 
tion, at different times. If the salad ingredi- 
ents are insipid, try to supply piquancy with 
the dressing. 

MAYONNAISE 

Mayonnaise dressing may be mixed cold or 
boiled. There will be a difference in the taste. 
Boiled mayonnaise, although it may have oil 
added to it after it cools, will lack the smooth- 
ness and the gliding quality of oil mayonnaise. 
It is much lighter in composition, softer and 

153 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

more delicate. For sandwich-making, for fruit 
salads that are to be served with whipped cream 
after the dressing is added, and for salmon 
salad, boiled mayonnaise might be more pal- 
atable. 

BOILED MAYOKNTAISE 

Boiled mayonnaise is made in this way: 
Cream together in a saucepan one tablespoon- 
ful each of butter, sugar, and flour, one half 
teaspoonful of salt and one half teaspoonful of 
mustard. Add the yolk of one egg, unbeaten. 
"When the egg is mixed with the rest, add three 
fourths of a cup of milk slowly, stirring it as 
you pour. Then set the pan over a slow fire 
and bring the mayonnaise gradually to a boil, 
stirring it continually. As it heats, add little 
by little a fourth of a cup of vinegar. The 
mayonnaise is done when it has boiled up once, 
and is smooth. Set it in a cool place. After 
it is cold, you can stir oil into it, if you like, to 
make it richer. 

OIL MAYONNAISE 

To make oil mayonnaise that will not sepa- 
rate during the making, you have only to add 
the acid ingredient before you add the oil. 

154 



SALADS 

This partly curdles the egg and makes it re- 
ceptive of the oil. Put in a cold mixing-bowl 
a half-teaspoonful each of salt, dry mustard, 
and powdered sugar, a pinch of white pepper, 
and a pinch of paprika. Mix these seasonings 
and add to them one and a half tablespoonfuls 
of either vinegar or lemon- juice. Add to them 
the yolk of one egg and beat the whole with an 
egg-beater. When it is blended, add the oil, — 
preferably olive-oil, but, lacking it, any reliable 
vegetable oil, — at first by the tablespoonful, 
then, as the mayonnaise thickens, in larger 
quantities. Altogether a cup and a half of oil 
may be absorbed by the egg. If the mixture 
will not thicken at first, which happens occa- 
sionally, set the bowl in the ice-box for an hour 
or so. You will find the mayonnaise thick, when 
you take it out again. 

VARIATIONS OF MAYONNAISE 

With either boiled or oil mayonnaise as a 
foundation you can make other dressings. 
Thousand-island dressing is mayonnaise with a 
teaspoonful of tomato sauce in it and either 
pickles or olives chopped with a branch of cel- 
ery and a teaspoonful of capers. Tartar sauce 

155 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

is made by adding to mayonnaise a pinch of 
mustard, some chopped parsley, a teaspoonful 
of onion juice, and a chopped hard-boiled egg. 
For fruit salad you can make a fluffy dressing 
by beating sweetened whipped cream into the 
mayonnaise. 

Keep your mayonnaise in a covered glass jar 
or earthenware bowl, in the ice-box. 

As soon as you get lettuce home from the 
store prepare it for salad-making. Wash it 
under cold running water and separate the 
leaves. If it is head lettuce, cut off and throw 
away the stem. If it is Chinese lettuce (a com- 
paratively new product in this country, — a 
heavy, succulent lettuce with a thick stalk and 
pale green leaves), take off the outer leaves, 
but let the center of the stalk remain intact. 
This may be sliced down crosswise, as you need 
it, as cabbage is sliced. Place the washed let- 
tuce in a lettuce bag or wrap it loosely in a nap- 
kin, and put it on ice. If there is no ice, keep 
it in a bowl of cold water, covered. 

Treat celery in the same way. Separate and 
wash every stalk, cutting off the leaves to be 
used for sauce-making or in cream-of-celery 

156 



SALADS 

soup. Save the centers of heart celery for serv- 
ing as a relish on the table. Put away the 
smaller stalks to make into stuffed celery as 
an hors d'ceuvre at lunch. Slit the big stalks 
down lengthwise into two or three strips. This 
will make them crisp and curly. Keep the cel- 
ery on ice. 

Cucumbers, when they are in season, may 
sometimes take the place of lettuce in salads. 
Wash the cucumber and run a fork lengthwise 
over the whole surface of the skin. Then peel 
the cucumber and slice it, and you will find that 
the edges of each slice are attractively scal- 
loped. Keep the slices in cold salted water for 
an hour before using them._ 

Eadishes may be sliced or peeled and served 
whole. 

To prepare tomatoes for a salad, wash them 
and drop them into boiling water off the stove. 
Leave them for a few minutes, then take them 
out and plunge them into cold water. The 
skins will now come off easily. Set the toma- 
toes in the ice-box to get cold and firm. 

Cabbage, if it is to be used in salads, should 
157 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

be kept either in the ice-box, wrapped in a cloth 
to keep its odor from the other food, or in some 
other cool place. To make it into cold slaw, 
slice it down crosswise of the head and chop 
it in a bowl. Mix it with boiled mayonnaise, 
sweetened with a little powdered sugar. 

The theory of salads is simple. It consists 
in serving in a cold, highly seasoned form any 
kind of food material that you have on hand. 

So a wide variety of kinds of salad is pos- 
sible. You cannot divide salads into fruit, 
vegetable, fish, meat, or plain lettuce, with ac- 
curacy, because these all overlap. Vegetables 
might belong in your salad of cold chopped veal, 
a few pieces of tart apple would give flavor to 
your vegetable salad, fish salad might need 
vegetables with it, and plain lettuce is much im- 
proved by both meat and fish. 

The question you have to decide continually 
is the question of assortment and flavoring: 
What elements combine successfully? Which 
dressing should the salad have, French dress- 
ing or mayonnaise? — or both? 

You must take the matter of salad seriously. 
It will make a big difference whether the string- 

158 



SALADS 

beans are put together with oil and vinegar or 
with mayonnaise. Beets will lose all character 
if they are mixed with mayonnaise. Sometimes 
a salad will be quite without a crisp element; 
when you might easily have added to it either 
celery or nuts. 

Since flavor and seasoning are so important, 
you must be ingenious in distributing them. If, 
for example, you are making a salad of several 
kinds of fruit, — ^bananas, say, and fresh peaches 
and Malaga grapes, — instead of cutting the 
fruit all up and adding mayonnaise to it in a 
mass, make the salad interesting and unex- 
pected by diffusing the dressing. In the bot- 
tom of the salad bowl lay lettuce leaves. Put 
a spoonful of mayonnaise on them. Peel the 
bananas and slice them in thin strips length- 
wise. Squeeze lemon-juice over the strips and 
lay them on the lettuce. Then cut up the 
peaches into slivers and stir them thoroughly 
with sweetened mayonnaise. Distribute them 
well over the bananas. Finally drop the grapes 
— seeded, and sprinkled with lemon-juice — on 
top of the salad. In this way, you see, the 
bananas will be covered with mayonnaise be- 

159 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

cause they are covered with peaches. Yet they 
will keep their own lemon flavor, too. 

This scheme of double dressing may be ap- 
plied to vegetable salads. Let the vegetables 
stand for half an hour in French dressing. 
Then shred lettuce, mix it with mayonnaise, and 
stir it up among the vegetables. Serve with a 
dab of mayonnaise on top of the salad. 



160 



rx 

DESSERTS 

Desserts, like soups and salads, must be 
adapted to dinner with a nice calculation of the 
need they are to supply. There are pies, cus- 
tards, and puddings to give heaviness to a meal; 
and tarts, fruit whips, and gelatine to give 
delicacy. 

Customs differ in households, and many peo- 
ple prefer to bring the dessert to the table in 
one bowl, and serve it there. But individual 
desserts are daintier, offer wider opportunity 
for decoration, and are economical and dietet- 
ically correct. 

There is this psychology behind the idea of 
individual desserts: the sight of an individual 
dessert — a cup custard, a molded bread-pud- 
ding, a tart, a garnished slice of pie — somehow 
implies that personal, special consideration has 
been given to the one who is to eat it ; that the 
amount of the dessert has been carefully gaged 

161 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

to round out a finished and adequate meal; in 
short, the individual dessert is a compliment. 

Of all cooked desserts custards are the sim- 
plest and the most quickly made. 

They are made with milk, sugar, and a flavor- 
ing element, and are thickened with either eggs 
or corn-starch, or with both. 

PLAIN CUSTABD 

To make a plain, eggless custard for two peo- 
ple, put half a pint of milk in a saucepan with 
a heaping tablespoonful of sugar. Set this 
over a moderate fire. In a cup mix half a 
tablespoonful of corn-starch with a tablespoon- 
ful of milk. Stir the milk and the sugar until 
they just reach the boiling-point. Then pour 
the dissolved corn-starch into them and turn 
the flame down low. Stir the custard for sev- 
eral minutes longer, then take it from the fire, 
add a quarter of a teaspoonful of vanilla, and 
pour into custard cups or sherbet glasses to 
cool, ready to serve. 

This will need some decorative feature, such 
as a teaspoonful of canned cherries, or of apple 
jelly, or two or three slices of banana in the 
center of each custard, added after it has cooled. 

162 



DESSEETS 

Or shredded cocoanut may be scattered over the 
top. 

COFFEE CUSTABD 

To make this same custard flavored with cof- 
fee, put half coffee and half milk in the sauce- 
pan with the sugar and proceed as before. Use 
fresh, strong coffee, well strained. 

OHOOOLATE CUSTABD 

To make chocolate custard, put a tablespoon- 
ful of cocoa in the saucepan first, add just 
enough milk to dissolve it, then gradually stir 
in the rest of the milk. Add the sugar and 
proceed as before. It will lighten and improve 
chocolate custard to beat half a dozen soft 
marshmallows into it, while it is still hot. Gar- 
nish the cold custards with marshmallows cut 
into pieces. 

EGG CUSTARD 

Custards made with egg will of course have 
more nourishment in them. They are made in 
the proportion of two eggs to one pint of milk. 
If you omit one egg you may substitute for it 
half a tablespoonful of corn-starch to supply 
the quota of thickening. Separate an eggy put- 
ting the white in a bowl ready for beating. Put 

163 



A PEIMEE OF COOKING 

the yolk in a saucepan. Stir the yolk and add 
to it a tablespoonful of sugar, then, gradually, 
half a pint of milk. Put the saucepan over a 
medium fire and stir until the custard thickens. 
Never let it boil. Keep it at the simmering- 
point. Add vanilla after you have taken it from 
the fire. Beat the white of egg^ sweeten it with 
a pinch of sugar, and pour the hot custard over 
it. Stir gently, to let the white of egg come to 
the top of the custard. Then pour the mixture 
into serving cups and set it away to cool. This 
is called floating island. 

Coffee or chocolate custard may both be made 
with egg if you want them to have more body 
to them. 

If you make a pint of custard and use only 
one eggj add the corn-starch when the custard 
first reaches the bubbling point. 

CUP CUSTARDS 

For cup custards use the same proportions 
as for boiled ones. Mix the custard in a bowl, 
putting in first the whole eggy then the sugar, 
the corn-starch if one egg is omitted or if no 
egg is used, the flavoring, and lastly the milk. 

164 



DESSERTS 

Dissolve the corn-starch in milk before adding 
it. When the materials are blended ponr them 
into small, buttered baking-dishes. Set these 
in a pan of hot water and bake in a slow oven 
until a knife inserted in a custard will come out 
with a clean blade. Half a pint of milk will 
make two cup custards. 

PUDDINGS 

A pudding is usually a heavier dessert than 
a custard. It is made with some dominant ma- 
terial, — rice, bread or fruit. It may be steamed 
or baked. 

Unlike custards, puddings are better baked 
in one mass, ready to be sliced into individual 
servings after they are cold. A pudding needs 
the richness that bulk cooking can give it. 

Have your baking-dishes of tin, aluminum or 
earthenware. 

KICE-PUDDING 

Rice-pudding is the most quickly mixed. 
Grease a baking-dish and put in it one table- 
spoonful of washed rice to half a pint of milk. 
Add a pinch of nutmeg and three tablespoon- 
fuls of sugar. Cover the dish and bake in a 
very slow oven until the rice is soft and has ab- 

165 



A PEIMEK OF COOKING 

sorbed the milk, and the pudding has browned 
on top. This will serve two. 

BREAB-PUDIXQTO 

Bread-pudding, made well, is far from being 
a conunon dish. Grease a small baking-dish 
and put in it a cupful of crumbled bread, — 
preferably not too fresh. In a bowl beat the 
yolk of an egg with a cup of milk. Pour this 
over the bread and stir in a tablespoonful of 
seeded raisins, being careful to cover the raisins 
with milk and bread, so they will not be exposed 
directly to the heat of the oven. Lastly, add 
half a cup of either brown or granulated sugar. 
Bake in a moderate oven until the pudding is 
set and brown. Then beat the white of eg^, 
slightly sweetened, and spread it over the top 
of the pudding. Return it to the oven and let 
the meringue brown. Serve the pudding either 
hot or cold. This amount is for two. 

This is the basis of bread pudding. Using it, 
you may elaborate or change it as you wiU. 
You may put strawberry jam in it instead of 
raisins, or cold cocoa instead of milk. Or you 
may bake it without fruit, — using a fraction 

166 



DESSEETS 

more sugar, — and serve it with chocolate sauce, 
made by melting a cake of sweet chocolate in 
a quarter of a cup of milk. Or you can make a 
marshmallow sauce for it out of ten marshmal- 
lows melted in a tablespoonful of milk. 

PEACH-PUDDING 

To make a pudding out of fresh or canned 
fruit, the simplest way is to use a plain muffin 
batter, highly sweetened. If you want to make 
a peach-pudding, for instance, pare and slice 
four peaches and squeeze over them the juice 
of half a lemon. Add a pinch of powdered 
clove. In a mixing-bowl beat one eggy and add 
two tablespoonfuls of sugar to it and half a cup 
of milk. Sift in one cupful of flour and a heap- 
ing teaspoonful of baking-powder. Beat, add 
the peaches, and pour into a greased baking- 
dish. Bake in a moderate oven until the pud- 
ding is brown. Serve with a sauce made by 
cooking two tablespoonfuls of sugar with four 
tablespoonfuls of water and the juice of half 
a lemon, — thickened, after several minutes' 
boiling, with a level teaspoonful of corn-starch 
dissolved in a little cold water. This quantity 
will serve four people. 

167 



A PEIMEE OF COOKING 

DATE-PUDDING 

There are modifications of plain fruit pud- 
dings, in which less flour and relatively more 
eggs are used. They are richer in composition. 
Such a pudding is made with dates and nuts. 
Beat one egg with a pinch of salt, add half a 
cup of sugar to it, half a cup of seeded and 
chopped dates, a quarter of a cup of chopped 
nut meats, and a tablespoonful of flour sifted 
with half a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Beat 
together and pour into a buttered baking-dish. 
Bake in a slow oven for about twenty minutes 
or until the pudding is set. Serve with whipped 
cream. This quantity of ingredients will make 
only two portions. 

The same pudding may be made with cooked 
prunes instead of dates, or with apricots or any 
canned or fresh fruit. You can see that it is 
only a sweetened souffle, with the addition of 
flour and baking-powder. 

APPLE-PUDDING 

There is another kind of fruit pudding, too, 
that is made without flour or eggs or any liquid. 
It depends upon fruit juices for moistening. 

168 



DESSERTS 

So watery fruits, like apples and pears, should 
be chosen for it. To make one of these, with 
apples, butter a baking-dish and put in the bot- 
tom of it slices of pared and cut-up apples, 
sprinkle them plentifully with granulated sugar 
and cinnamon, then cover with raisins. Repeat 
the layers, leaving a layer of sugar on top. 
Cover the baking-dish and bake in a quick oven 
until the apples are soft and glazed by the 
melted sugar. Take them out of the oven and 
set marshmallows over the top. Return to the 
oven to brown the marshmallows, with the lid 
off the baking-pan. Serve the pudding hot, 
with a lemon sauce. 

Four apples will make a pudding for four 
people. 

FRUIT WHIP 

Under the head of puddings might fall fruit 
whips, which are much too fragile in construc- 
tion to be called puddings, properly, but which 
are baked, and served with a sauce. 

They are made with the white of egg^ alone. 
Beat the whites of two eggs very stiff, add two 
tablespoonfuls of sugar and two tablespoonfuls 
of flour sifted with a teaspoonful of baking- 
powder. Drop in a cupful of chopped fruit, — 

169 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

dates, prunes, peaches, cherries, bananas, or 
berries, — and pour immediately into a shallow 
greased baking-dish. Bake in a slow oven until 
the egg rises and browns slightly. Serve cold, 
in two sherbet glasses. 

When a sauce is served with fruit whip, it 
must necessarily be as light as the whip itself. 
Whipped cream sweetened and colored pink 
with a few drops of gelatine flavoring is ap- 
propriate. So is a sauce made of candied cher- 
ries, chopped and cooked with half a dozen 
marshmallows soaked in milk. 

Directions for making gelatine are always 
found on the package, and they differ with dif- 
ferent brands. Try to have several flavors of 
gelatine on hand, at once, so that you can make 
a little of each, to get a contrasting effect. 
Orange and strawberry together will be eaten 
with twice the relish of either flavor alone. 

And garnish your gelatine desserts with 
pieces of fruit, whipped cream, ground maca- 
roons, marshmallows. Never use nuts; gela- 
tine makes them soggy. 

If you beat gelatine with an egg-beater just 
170 



DESSERTS 

as it is beginning to harden you can double the 
quantity of it. You can beat whipped cream 
into it, too, or cold cocoa or coffee. 

PIES 

The most substantial of desserts is pie. And 
it is not hard to make ; it follows very definite, 
easy rules. 

To make the crust, first have spread out in 
front of you on an adequately large table space 
a big bread-board, a mixing-bowl, a rolling-pin, 
a pie pan, a small half -pint flour-sifter, baking- 
powder, butter, lard or any good vegetable fat, 
and a glass of cold water, a fork, and a sharp 
knife. 

First light the oven with a moderate flame. 
Then grease the pie pan and sprinkle flour over 
the bread-board. 

Into the mixing-bowl sift two half-pints of 
flour, putting two teaspoonfuls of baking-pow- 
der and half a teaspoonful of salt with the 
second sifterful. Add to this about half a cup 
of shortening (See Page 84), and with your fin- 
gers work at it until the flour has taken up the 
shortening and turned into a sort of coarse 
meal. Make a hole in the center of the flour 

171 



A PRIMER OF COOKING 

and pour into it a very little cold water. Make 
the flour and water into a big ball, adding more 
water if necessary. When the ball is compact 
enough to be picked up, divide it in two and 
lay half of it out on the floured board. Flour 
the rolling-pin and roll the dough out very flat, 
as nearly round as you can make it. Fit it over 
the buttered pie pan and with a sharp knife 
trim it around the edge of the pan. You are 
now ready tc put the ingredients of the pie in 
place. Suppose it to be apples, in this case. 
Pare and cut into small pieces about four good- 
sized apples, distributing them evenly over the 
pie crust. In the bowl that you mixed the 
dough in, put half a cup of sugar and two table- 
spoonfuls of flour. (The flour is to thicken the 
juice made by the apples and melting sugar. 
With apricots, peaches, or other less watery 
fruits flour is not needed.) Sprinkle the flour 
and sugar over the apples, add a pinch of either 
clove or cinnamon and a dab or two of butter. 
Then roll out the top pie crust and lay it over 
the apples. Trim the edge of the pan. Make 
indentations along the edge with a fork, and 
cut two or three short slashes in the top of the 

172 



DESSERTS 

pie, to allow the steam to escape during cook- 
ing. Bake the pie for about half an hour, in 
not too hot an oven. Test it, when the crust 
is brown, by sticking a fork in one of the slashes. 
If the apples are soft to the touch, the pie is 
done. It will be better not to cut the pie until 
it has cooled. 

A cream pie or a lemon pie is made with only 
a lower crust. Prepare half the usual amount 
of dough and spread the crust over the bottom 
of the pan. Bake the crust in a hot oven. 
When it is done, and has partly cooled, add the 
cream or lemon filling, with its meringue, and 
reheat to brown the meringue. 

The filling for a cream pie is the same as an 
egg custard. (Page 163.) A pint of milk will 
make enough custard for one pie. If you like, 
you can add half a cup of shredded cocoanut 
to the custard before pouring it into the pie 
shell. Instead of pouring the custard over the 
beaten egg whites, put the egg whites on top 
of the custard after it is in the pie shell. 

TABTS 

Tarts may very easily be made out of left- 
over scraps of pie dough. Roll the dough out 

173 



A PEIMER OF COOKING 

very thin and press it down over the reverse 
side of a muffin pan, greased beforehand. Bake 
in a hot oven. Take the shells carefully from 
the muffin rings and set them to cool. Just be- 
fore serving them fill them with fruit preserves 
or cooked custard. These same tart shells will 
do as patties for creamed oysters or meat. 

LAST-MINUTE DESSERTS 

Besides these cooked desserts, there are doz- 
ens of quick desserts, ready to be got together 
in a few minutes. Cheese and crackers make 
a reliable one. Fresh fruit is always a wise 
dessert. So are nuts and cluster raisins. Or 
you may have stuffed dates, fruit cup, an elab- 
orate sweet fruit salad, individual squares of 
devil's food cake with whipped cream and a 
candied cherry on top of each one, half a grape- 
fruit with a teaspoonful of jam in the center of 
it, salted nuts, or after-dinner mints. 



174 



INDEX 



SUBJECT PAGE 

Appetizers 47 

Apple Pie 172 

Apple Pudding 168 

Apple Sauce 60 

Asparagus 142 

Bacon 28 

Baked Beans 146 

Baked Fish 112 

Baked Meats 93 

Baked Potatoes 135 

Bass Ill 

Beans 142 

Beette 144 

Biscuit 35 

Boiled Mayonnaise 154 

Boiled Potatoes 134 

Braised Chicken 128 

Breaded Meats 94 

Bread-Pudding 166 

Broiled Chicken 125 

Broiled Steak 90 

Broth— Chicken 129 

Buckwheat Cakes 32 

Butter Cake 64 

Butter Sauces 106 

Cabbage 144-157 

Cake 62 

Canned-Fruit Marmalade 39 

Canned Vegetables 146 

Caramel Icing 71 

Carrots 142-143 

Casserole Dishes 99 



SUBJECT PAGE 

Celery 145-156 

Cereals 41 

Cheese and Crackers.... 174 

Cheese Sauce 108 

Chicken 121 

Chicken Broth 129 

Chicken Fricassee 128 

Chicken Pot Pie 129 

Chicken Salad 130 

Chinese Lettuce 156 

Chocolate Cake 65 

Chocolate Cookies 68 

Chocolate Custard 163 

Chocolate Icing 70-71 

Chops 91 

Cocoa 23 

Coffee 22 

Coffee Custard 163 

Cookies 67 

Cooking Fats 84 

Corn Bread 36 

Corn on Cob 144 

Creamed Dishes 56 

Cream Pie 173 

Cream Sauce 56 

Cream Soup 82 

Croquettes 57 

Cucumbers 157 

Cup Cakes 66 

Cup Custard 164 

Custard (Eggless) 162 



Date Pudding 168 

Dates (Stuffed) 59 



175 



INDEX 



SUBJECT PAGE 

Desserts 161 

Dried Lima Beans 147 

Duck 130 

Dumplings 98 

Egg Custard 163 

Eggs 24 

Fish Ill 

Fish in Casserole 113 

Flannel Cakes '32 

Floating Island 164 

Frankfurters 30 

French Dressing 151 

Fried Chicken 125 

Fried Eggs 24 

Fried Fish Ill 

Fried Oysters 119 

Fried Potatoes 137 

Fried Steak 88 

Fritters 52 

Fritto Misto 53 

Fruit Salad 159 

Fruit Whip 169 

Gelatine 170 

Giblets 130 

Gingerbread 69 

Goose 130 

Grape Fruit 59 

Green Corn 144 

Green Vegetables 142 

Grilled Fish 112 

Halibut 114 

Ham 29 

Hash 54 

Hashed Brown Potatoes 138 

Hors d 'CEuvres 47 

Hot Cakes 31 



Icings 

Individual Desserts 



70 
161 



Kitchen Bouquet 79 

Kitchen Utensils 13 



SUBJECT PAGE 

Lard 85 

Last Minute Desserts. . . 174 

Layer Cake 65 

Left-overs, Use of 49 

Lemon Pie 173 

Lima Beans 142 

Lima Beans (Dried) 147 

Liver 91 

Macaroni 140 

Maple Syrup 33 

Marmalade 39 

Marshmallow Sauce 167 

Mashed Potatoes 136 

Mayonnaise 153 

Meat Loaf 97 

Meats 86 

Meat Soup 79 

Muffins 34 

Mushrooms 143 

Navy Beans 146 

Noodles 140 

Nuts 174 

Oil Mayonnaise 154 

Olive Oil 84 

Omelet 25 

Onions 148 

Orange Marmalade 39 

Oranges 59 

Oysters— Fried 119 

Oyster Soup 118 

Peach Pudding 167 

Peas 142 

Perch Ill 

Pies 171 

Plain Custard 162 

Poached Eggs 26 

Popovers 36 

Potatoes 133 

Potatoes au Gratin 138 

Pot Pie— Chicken 129 



176 



INDEX 



SUBJECT PAGE 

Pot Roast 93 

Poultry 121 

Prunes 60 

Pudding 165 

Puree 81 

Radishes 157 

Radish Sauce 109 

Raisins 174 

Rice 140 

Rice Pudding 165 

Roast Beef 91 

Roast Chicken 123 

Roast Meats 96 

Salads 150 

Salmon Loaf 116 

Salmon Pie 117 

Sauces 103 

Sauce Tartar 109 

Sauce Vinaigrette 108 

Sausage 29 

Scrambled Eggs 26 

Seasonings 79 

Shad 112 

Shortening 63 

Souflle 50 

Soup 78 

Soup Seasonings 79 

Spice Cake 66 

Spices 79 

Sponge Cake 63 

Steak 88 



SUBJECT PAGE 

Steamed Eggs 27 

Steamed Potatoes 133 

Stew 54-98 

Strawberry Sauce 61 

Stuffed Dates 59 

Stuffed Fish 112 

Stuffed Meats 94 

Stuffed Peppers 47 

Stuffed Potatoes 135 

Syrup 33 

Tartar Sauce 109-155 

Tarts 173 

Tea 22 

Thousand Island Dress- 
ing 155 

Timbales 50 

Toast 37 

Tomatoes 147-157 

Trays 19 

Trout Ill 

Tuna 117 

Turkey 130 

Utensils and Accessories 13 

Vanilla Icing 71 

Vegetable Fats 85 

Vegetables 142 

Vegetable Soup 81 

Velvet Sauce 107 

Vinaigrette Dressing . . . 153 

Vinaigrette Sauce 108 



177 



